


One Final Night

by scionical



Category: Marvel (Comics), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Bitterness, Cynicism, F/M, Feels for the Fantastic Four, Gen, Harry Osborn Makes Badass Infomercials, Hope vs. Despair, Multi, Peter Likes Icy Hot, Quipping is 9/10ths of Writing Spider-Man, Sometimes Super Powers Suck, The Avengers Need to Get Home, getting old sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2018-05-15 19:12:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 55,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5796454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scionical/pseuds/scionical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After twenty years of spinning webs, Peter Parker has lost the joy he once had. After life kicks him in the teeth, repeatedly, he has grown cold to the world around him, only taking joy in the occasional contact he gets to share with his daughter.</p><p>But when the preeminent super hero teams of New York are taken out of commission, a crime wave like the city hasn't seen in decades sweeps across the Five Boroughs. Teaming up with two amazing friends, Peter has the chance to reclaim his spotlight and maybe break out of the rut he's lived in for so long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Going Through The Motions

**Author's Note:**

> This is my own little version of the Marvel Universe, and takes bits and pieces of other continuities to establish a solid throughline. The most important elements are as follows:
> 
> * Almost everything super-hero related can be traced back to attempting to recreate the super-soldier serum. (From the Ultimate Universe).  
> * Civil War did not happen, nor did the House of M.  
> * Spider-Man never became an Avenger, and they are decently new to the scene (as in the MCU).  
> * The X-Men follow pretty much the same history as Earth 616.  
> * The Fantastic Four are the venerable super-hero team, tracing their roots back to the early 80s.  
> * Hydra has not taken over SHIELD. The Triskelion (from Ultimate Universe and MCU) still stands. 
> 
> This is my first attempt at fanfic. I am new to the scene and the fandoms, though my wife has been a fan for many years and written some very impressive fics. While I have never been a fan of the style, I have always respected it and the people that write it... I have just never had the desire to play in someone else's sandbox myself. Recently, my wife has been posting an amazing fic, and like any good piece of writing, it inspired me to try my hand at it. You are now looking at the result.
> 
> So, please keep in mind that I do not know the conventions of fanfic. I don't know the usual pairings, I don't know what all the acronyms mean, and I don't know what upsets or delights the fandom beyond what my wife tells me. I'll learn in time, but for right now, I am pretty much ignorant of it all. What I do know (I hope) is what makes for a good story, and with that in mind, I give you "One Final Night." I have already written the first seven chapters, so I have hit the point that I know I will finish. I'll post them every couple of days as they are rewritten.
> 
> I welcome all comments, criticisms, kudos, and claims that this is the worst written tripe you've ever read. Be gentle or be cruel, I am happy with either, but please be respectful to myself and anyone else that dares to comment. Thank you for reading, and use only as directed. Operators are standing by.

**Chapter One**

**Sunday – May 31 st, 2015 – 9:20 PM**

It had been fun when he was seventeen.

When you’re seventeen, everything is awesome, even if you are at the bottom of the pecking order. It’s a time of adventure, of discovery. Every day is filled with new revelations about the world and about yourself; a love of photography, an intense attraction to red hair, or tendency to ignore caution stickers posted near genetically modified super-spiders. You can barely go a week without discovering something amazing, and every one of them has the potential to shape the rest of your life. And when you have the equivalent strength, reflexes, and senses of a spider, it’s ten times better.

Peter jumped from the wall as Rhino came crashing into it. It’s a move that he has perfected over the years, one that both of them should know by rote. And just like the last ten (or fifty) times, Aleksei barrels into and then through the wall with the force of a rushing freight train. Peter lands and drops back, feet planted while his shoulder blades scrape the floor, extending his arms and shooting twin web-lines into the ankles of the retreating behemoth. He spins off one foot and into a standing position before yanking as hard as he can, really putting his weight into it.

There is a moment when Rhino is horizontal, floating in space and parallel to the ground after his feet are ripped from the floor. For a second, he reminds Peter of Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff; all that’s missing is Rhino holding up a ‘Yikes!” sign. Gravity asserts itself and Rhino crashes to the floor with a comical thud.

Peter takes to the air, springing the twenty odd feet to land on Rhino’s back. Alexesei screams and curses in frustration as Peter starts webbing him up, attaching him to anything and everything within reach. Once he is secure, Peter rolls forward and sits cross legged in front of the big boy, an elbow on his knee and head resting on his fist. Alexei is so heavily coated that all he can see is the grey horn sticking up through a generally roundish mass, one that is beginning to thrash and shake as panic starts sets in. With a sigh, Peter reaches forward and parts the webs from Rhino’s face.

“Are you trying to fucking kill me?” Rhino demands after sucking in a lungful of air. “I hate you. I so fucking hate you.”

Peter shrugged and stood up, taking the time to stretch his back. Vertebrae pop, and a twinge in his ass assures him that he’ll be favoring his right leg for a day or two. He must have pulled something in that last flip.

“You alright?” Rhino asked, craning his head to look up at Peter. “That didn’t sound good.”

“I think I pulled something,” He twists his torso left and right to loosen up the muscles. “I didn’t have time to limber up before you went on your little rampage.”

“Sorry. I’ll be sure to tweet about it first, next time.”

Peter laughs in spite of himself, crouching down again and tapping Rhino on the forehead. “Hey, I’ve got a thing. Think you can explain to Boys in Blue what went down?”

The webs coating Rhino’s shoulder quake in what Peter imagines must be a webbed up shrug. “Yeah, I got time. I think they’ll be able to figure it out, though.”

Peter glanced around the bank lobby. It looked like a spider-orgy had taken place, with Rhino taking the distinguished role of middle man. “You might just be right. You alone, Alexei? I heard you and Marko hooked up again.”

“Fuck him,” Alexei said, spitting the words out. “Bastard has gone yellow. Says he’s taking the Osborne Method.”

Peter snorted and they both laughed for a second.

“I am getting to old for this shit,” Rhino said.

“Aren’t we all?” Faintly, he can hear sirens in the distance. Another quick stretch, and Peter hops to the hole Rhino had been nice enough to make. “Stay in prison this time, big boy. Think retirement thoughts.”

“Fuck you,” Rhino snaps, and then collapses in on himself with a deep sigh. “See you next time, web-head.”

Throwing the fallen villain a wave, Peter springs in to the air, snapping a web-line at the nearest high rise and tugging himself into the sky before launching a new web to start a proper swing with. He glides slowly, hand over hand, too tired for any of the acrobatic bullshit, steadily making his way down the canyons of Manhattan. He’s going to be late, he’s already accepted that fact, and he knows that Mary Jane is going to be supremely pissed.

He swings on his line to the upmost extension and releases, diving forward and twisting his arms back to launch twin lines, one to each building on either side. He drops and lets the familiar feeling of free fall wash over him. The lines are still launching, flowing from his wrists and into the air, continuing to spin until he squeezes the sphincters shut. He used to find that hilarious, that he had sphincters embedded in the underside of his wrists, but now even that has lost its humor. The buildings shoot by, gravity pulling him head first to the street below. If he doesn’t grab the lines he’ll just fall, his webs trailing him all the way down. From this height, the streets are filled with tiny lights racing along a giant Pac Man maze, blinking and zooming along in an unknowable pattern. Closer and closer they come until Peter reaches terminal velocity. The wind screams as he rushes to his doom, ears popping at the intense altitude change.

 _This is going to suck_ he thinks before squeezing off the web-lines and grabbing hold.

Momentum comes crashing to a halt, flipping his feet forward and nearly ripping his arms out of socket. The webs stretch to the maximum, some of the strands snapping altogether before the bungee effect takes hold and his inertia reverses, rocketing him into the sky so fast that the force of gravity nearly rips him apart. For a moment his head swims and he is on the verge of blacking out, but he pulls through, twisting in mid-air as his velocity slows and launching a new web-line. He lets it guide him in a graceful arc and releases, flipping twice before landing on a balcony of some dark high-rise.

Peter pulls his mask off and stares at it, holding it in both hands before shaking his head. Spider-Man’s eyes stare back at him, the reflective lenses catching just enough of his unshaven reflection to make Peter stare. Grey marks his hair and his beard, his gaunt cheeks tight over high cheekbones. His hair is plastered to his head, partially because of the mask, and partially because he hasn’t brushed it in a couple of days. There is a pale, haunting pallor to his skin that could just be the light, but might also be scurvy. It’s not the Peter he sees in his mind when he thinks of himself. That Peter grew up and got old somewhere along the way.

He tucks the mask under his armpit, reaching for the hidden compartment on his hip and pulling his cell phone free, checking it to make sure the tiff with Rhino didn’t destroy the thing. It’s a flip-phone, and an archaic one at that, and once again Peter tries to convince himself that the only reason he doesn’t have a smartphone is because it would get shattered in one of his fights. He thumbs through the directory, pulling up Mary Jane’s number and holding the phone to his ear.

“We’re sorry,” a friendly yet soulless voice says on the other end, “but your available call time has expired. Please stay on the line to purchase additional time with a credit card, or visit us online at…”

“Son of a bitch,” Peter stands and launches the phone into the night sky. He crouches again and grumps for a second before shooting a line of web after the plummeting device, yanking it back to his hand. There’s no way he can make it all the way out to Long Island with any hope of saving face, and in all honesty, it’s so late that he might as well just wait and try to work it all out tomorrow. Rest and coffee. That’s what he needs. Pulling his mask back out of his armpit, Peter can’t help but cough after tugging it back on.

_And deodorant._

He leaps from the building and spins a new web, swinging around the building in the direction of the East River, looking for the familiar lights of Brooklyn across the band of darkness. He’ll call tomorrow, talk his way through this, and make up for it somehow. May will understand.

She always does.


	2. Cool As Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter tries to make amends for his absence when an old friend pops out of nowhere.

**Chapter Two**

**Tuesday – June 2 nd, 2015 – 12:56 PM**

**  
** Peter looked down at his shoes.

They were black and badly scuffed, poking out of the end of his khaki pants like battle-scarred soldiers that had spent far too much time on the front line. It was the only pair of dress shoes he owned, the pair he had bought to attend Reed’s funeral ten years earlier. He had ended up attending in costume after all, and never worn the shoes, they had seen plenty of use in the years since.

The droning in his ear continued as he leaned against the wall, playing with the hem of his blue polo-shirt in one hand while holding the phone receiver up to his ear with the other. Directly across from him, an enormous poster with a glossy image of the American Flag let him know the current rate of minimum wage, as well as what to do and whom to call if he was being sexually harassed.

He hated blue. A few years back, he’d even gotten rid of the blue in his costume, replacing it with a more sensible black. Blue was a common color in all the new hipster heroes, in different shades from pale to deep, showing off how colorful and fabulous the next generation of heroes could be. Peter hated all them, and was convinced that the quinoa-eating, ukulele-strumming generation of brats would be the end of super-heroing once and for all.

“Peter?”

Her voice went from droning to irritated, sharp and sudden. “Yeah?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Of course I am, MJ,” he said. “It’s just, you don’t understand. Rhino…”

“I can read the blogs, Peter. I am perfectly aware of _what_ you were doing. But she is your daughter! You made plans with her, and you let her down again. Again, Peter!”

Peter sighed and took off his glasses, closing his eyes and resting his head against the wall. “I know, and I’m sorry MJ, but…”

“Don’t you dare MJ me, Peter Parker,” Mary Jane snapped. “Neither your excuses nor your cutesy bullshit is going to work. You broke her heart. She sat by that window until nine o’clock waiting for you, crying. And not wracking-sobs-crying. The silent withdrawn kind. The bad kind!”

“Can I talk to her?” Peter asked, interrupting while she took a breath to gather more steam.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mary Jane said. “She’s still upset, mad at you. She had her heart set on that fair.”

“It’s still on for another week, I can take her this—“

“John already took us,” Mary Jane interrupted. “Yesterday, while I assume you were sleeping off whatever dance you and your boyfriend did in that bank.”

“Hey,” Peter said, anger rising. “Don’t even go there. You have no idea what it’s like.”

“No, but I have a damn good idea of what it’s like to clean your blood up after you’re done tussling with one of those freaks,” Mary Jane shot back. They both went quiet for a moment, but when Mary Jane spoke again, her voice was soft, the anger gone. “Peter, she deserves better than this.”

“You’re right,” he answered. “And you know I believe that. Just.. tell you what, how about Washington Park this Sunday?”

“You’re invoking the neutral ground,” Mary Jane said. “Don’t set it up if you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it. I’ll meet you there at noon. We can have lunch, and then I’ll take May to the Met.”

Mary Jane sighed and weighed it over.

“If you are even a minute late—“

“Thanks, MJ,” Peter said, perking up immediately. “Look, my breaks over, okay? I’ll see you Sunday.”

“Peter, I—“

“Love you!” he said without thinking and hung up the phone. He tucked his polo back into his pants, leaving the break room and walking out to the sales floor. He drifted through the orderly lines of electronics, helping customers find items and opening up the games case for a couple of teenagers. He was happy that he was going to be able to patch things up with MJ, but worried that May was going to be more challenging. Still, she loved the Met, and he believed the dinosaurs exhibit would make the perfect window back to his daughter’s good graces.

A call for a tech wizard sounded across the speakers above, and Peter made his way back through the displays to the help desk. As an assistant manager, it was his duty to be the resident ‘wizard’ and to help out the customers with their gadgets and devices. Mostly that meant showing them how to plug in a charger or turn a computer on, but occasionally it was something really complicated like working the slide lock on a smartphone. Something that really brought his mighty intellect to bear.

He stepped up to the desk, distracted by a display of cleavage one of the big screens across the back wall.

“Hi,” he said, turning his head to look at the customer. “Welcome to Best B—“

He nearly choked, looking into the smiling face of Bobby Drake.

 

###

**Monday – June 1 st, 2015 – 3:12 PM**

Two hours later, Peter sat in on a bench near the lake in Central Park, directly across from Belvedere Castle. After a moment of surprise and greetings, Bobby had invited him to have coffee when he got off work. Peter had spent the afternoon working on excuses to text his old friend, but in the end, he wasn’t one to turn down a free cup of coffee.

These days, he didn’t turn down free _anything._

Bobby had not changed much over the years. Just a hair past forty, his face retained its youthful quality, something that Peter doubted he would ever lose. There wasn’t a hint of grey in either his hair or the well-trimmed goatee he wore, though Bobby had given up the metal t-shirts and ripped jeans of his youth for a sweater and slacks combo. For a moment, he found it hard to believe that this was the same man he’d snuck into a GWAR concert with.

They spent most of their coffee reminiscing over old times, talking about the adventures he, Bobby, and Angelica a lifetime ago. Years before, Professor X had retired and left Magneto in control of his school. Bobby quit, refusing the live under his former enemy’s direction. By happenstance, Angelica had her own problems at the Massachusetts Academy, and come to Mutant High for help. The two of them made it to New York just in time see Spider-Man fighting Doctor Octopus on Ellis Island, and decided to join in. The three hit it off immediately, and Peter had even been able to convince Aunt May to let them move into the boarding house. Dubbed Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends by the Post, the Bugle had instead insisted that Spider-Man was now the ring-leader of a mutant terrorist cell.

It had been good times, but he hadn’t seen Bobby much since the summer of ’96. His friend had matured a lot in the meantime, far more relaxed than the ironically hotheaded Iceman that Peter remembered.

“So how are things up in Salem Center?”

Bobby shook his head, sipping his coffee. “I’m back in the big bad city, Pete. Nice little condo up in the Village.”

Peter whistled. “Super-heroing has been good to you.”

“I’ve been teaching at the school for over a decade,” Bobby said. “We actually get paid, you know. Saved it away, made some wise investments. That’s a lot easier to do when you have access to alien compter systems. They are damn good at forecasting stocks, and Forge knows his shit when it comes to tech trends.”

Peter snorted. “Invested in Starktech, huh?”

Bobby laughed. “Every last penny.”

“How are the rest of the X-Men doing?”

“Cyke’s in charge now. They renamed the school after Jean,” Bobby shook his head again. “After the fifth rebuild, I guess it seemed that using Professor’s was just asking for trouble. There’s a whole thing involved there, but I think he would have liked it. He’s shacking up with Emma Frost now… Scott, that is. Not the Professor.”

“Clearly,” Peter said. “Is Jean actually gone this time?”

Bobby shook his head. “I have no idea. Probably not.”

“Are you retired, then?” Peter asked.

“No, just not doing the X thing anymore.” Bobby leaned forward, a serious look crossing his features. Peter looked over at him, and saw something forming in his friend’s eyes, something important. Bobby wasn’t one to wax serious, and when he did, he telegraphed it all over his face.

“I just…” Bobby sighed and shook his head.

Peter leaned forward, holding his cup in both hands. He concentrated on the warmth of the coffee, waiting until Bobby could form whatever it is he was going to say. It was better than staring the man down. Peter allowed his friend the time to pick his words.

“How’s Mary Jane?” Bobby asked after what seemed an eternity. Peter sighed; Bobby was going to bail after all.

“You’d have to ask her,” he said, taking a long sip off his coffee. “She’s living in Long Island now, with her new husband.”

“Jesus, Pete,” Bobby said with the same sad empathy Peter had heard a hundred times since the divorce. “I had no idea. What about May?”

“Lives with her. MJ threatened to out me if I fought her for custody.” He went back to playing with his coffee cup as another uncomfortable silence settled.

“God damn,” Bobby said after a while “I never would have imagined that in a thousand years. Not in any of the fucked up alternate universes we’ve visited, nor in any of the twisted versions of reality that invaded ours. Hell, if I had to put money on you and MJ together forever or the Blob winning a pie-eating contest, it would be you, all the way.”

“Things change,” Peter said. “People get older, go down different paths. I just don’t think she could cope with raising a baby and babying a super-hero at the same time. I think about it all the time, man. Maybe I should have done what Murdock did and toss in the towel, hang up my tights and let this new generation of shitheads fight the good fight.”

“Oh yeah,” Bobby said, “because that’s an option. Half of these assholes can’t find their own asses with both hands, much less take down an actual threat. A lot of them are just copying what we did, even using our names. Have you seen the new Ms. Marvel?”

Peter nodded. “She’s alright, though. In fact, I understand that Carol may even be the one that put her up to it.”

Bobby shrugged. “Maybe. After what happened with Rogue, the X-Men aren’t exactly on Carol’s confide list. But still, you get my point. They can’t even come up with their own identities, much less a clever line to deliver during a smack-down. It’s pathetic. Youth is wasted on the young.”

“It’s kind of cool, though,” Peter said, leaning back against the bench. “Kind of keeps the legacy going. For some of us, anyway.”

“Yeah, seems like Spidey is still the kid-tested, mother-approved version from way back when.”

Peter laughed. “Yeah, well. Like I said, maybe I should have hung it up when I still had groupies. Fucking Avengers.”

They sat in silence again for a moment. It was uncomfortable as hell. Peter had known Bobby for almost a quarter of a century, he should at least be able to make small talk with him.

“What about you?” he asked. “Is there a snow-woman waiting for you in the Village?”

Bobby choked on his coffee, little flurries of frozen brown snow shooting out of his nose.

“Pardon?”

“Are you seeing anyone, Frosty?” Peter asked, waving the frost away. No one seemed to notice, for which Peter was grateful.

“Yeah,” Bobby said uneasily. “I am. Off and on, anyway. It’s not totally serious, but it might get there.”

“Normie or enhanced?”

“Oh, just as super as you or I,” Bobby said. “Not omega-class like yours truly or anything, but still a force to be reckoned with.”

“Mutant, huh? Former teammate?”

Bobby nodded uneasily. Peter glanced at him. His friend fidgeted, the same look on his face as from before.

“Oh, spit it out, Iceman,” Peter said. “What is it that’s got you on edge?”

“Fuck,” Bobby said, then looked out at the lake. A flight of ducks took off from the waters, landing on the shore to chase down bready treats thrown by park-goers. They watched the birds for a moment until Bobby took a deep breath.

“Pete, I’m gay.”

Peter glanced sidelong at his friend. Bobby watched him nervously, signs of fear and vulnerability showing in his blue eyes. Peter had to be careful of what he said next, or Bobby would disappear and Iceman would come out, on the defensive and ready to rumble.

Instead, he just started laughing.

“What?” Bobby’s voice was tinged with uncertainty. “Why are you laughing?”

“No, no,” Peter said, truly taken in for a moment and shaking his head. He could feel tears starting to form in the corner of his eyes. “It just all makes sense now.”

“What does?”

He tried to stop laughing but couldn’t, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder to brace himself. “All these years, I thought your obsession with the Ice Capades was a result of your mutant power, but this explains fucking _everything.”_

Bobby stared at him, only driving him to laugh harder. Within a moment, they were both collapsed against the bench in hysterics, drawing the eye of everyone in the vicinity.

“So,” Peter said once they had gained composure again. “Who is he?”

“Did you ever meet Jean-Paul?”

Peter concentrated for a moment, the different faces of the X-Men flipping past his mind’s eye. “North…”

“Northstar,” Bobby finished for him, nodding. “He comes down for weekends.”

“I was hoping you’d say it was Colossus,” Peter said. “I’ve always kind of had the tingling around him.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Bobby said, his voice a little wistful. Then he glanced at Peter. “Wait, your spider-sense detects gay?”

Peter laughed. “No. I use the same old gaydar everyone else uses.”

“Damn,” Bobby said. “I guess I can hold off on emailing Piotr, then. All for the best. Jean-Paul is the jealous type.”

They both laughed again for a second, relaxing on the bench.

“So, we’re cool?” Bobby asked.

Peter snorted. “Of course we’re cool, Bobby. Why wouldn’t we be?”

Bobby shrugged and leaned forward. “After I told the gang back in Rochester, it got weird, especially with Kurt and Hank. Everyone was supportive, you know, but… I guess they were going out of their way to be supportive? Like, to prove how cool they were? Does that make sense?”

Peter nodded, wishing he had a couple of bucks for another cup of coffee.

“In the end it was just time to go. No one was comfortable, least of all me. I just don’t want to repeat that with you, man.”

“Tell you what,” Peter said, shaking his empty cup at Bobby. “You pick up the next round and we’re cool.”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “I’m serious, Pete.”

“I know you are.” Peter said, turning sidelong on the bench to face his friend. Sure enough, his sciatica flared up, the muscles still sore from dealing with Rhino. He winced and rubbed his back, readjusting to a more comfortable position.

“Bobby, we’ve been friends for longer than I can remember. You were a pain in the ass when you were chasing pussy, and I am sure you’re even more of a pain in the ass as a cock-sucker.”

“Jesus, Pete,” Bobby said, taking his empty cup from his hand. “You kiss your Aunt with that mouth?”

“Yeah, she’s dead too, Bobby,” Peter said, and rushed through saying something as Bobby’s face fell with that sad-empathy again. “My point is, you are who you are, and you’ve always been who you are. I don’t give half a rat’s ass about who you’re sleeping with. It didn’t matter to me in the past, it doesn’t matter to me know. We’re buds. We’ll always be buds. That’s how it is. You’re gay? As far as I am concerned, that’s fucking awesome. One less asshole to compete with in this damn city.”

Bobby stood up and smiled. “Leave it to you to break it down to its most basic form.”

“We all have our talents,” Peter grinned and extended his empty cup. “Now shut up and go fetch me a latte, Dairy Queen.”

Bobby’s eyes narrowed for a moment, and then they both burst out into laughter again.


	3. Grimm Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter tries to relax to an infomercial when suddenly old enemies attack the Baxter Building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Minor character death  
> \- Reference to 9/11

**Chapter Three:**

**Wednesday - June 3 rd, 2015 - 11:37 PM**

If he owned his own bathtub, Peter would bathe in Icy Hot.

The best part about being super-humanly flexible was that he could bend in just about every direction necessary to easily apply the goop. Of course, the rub was that the worst thing about being super-humanly flexible was how his muscles felt a few hours — or days — afterward. If he didn’t have the ability to literally bend over backwards, in order shoot a charging behemoth in the ankles with webs for example, he wouldn’t need to apply Icy Hot.

The only light in his one room apartment came from his little TV, an old CRT unit that had been made during the days of the cold war. When New York mandated that everyone switch to a coaxial connection and stopped broadcasting over the air, he’d actually had to buy an adapter so he could keep getting the network channels. And of course, since Radio Shack had long since ceased to exist, he’d ended up just making one himself. If he’d ever owned the remote, it was now long gone. Luckily, the TV came from a time when people still believed in buttons, and he had his own way to avoid getting up.

A moments concentration to gel up his fluid, and Peter raised his arm, shooting a small pellet of webbing from the underside of his wrist, hitting the mute button on the television set. The sound of crappy inspirational music mixed with applause filled the apartment as the television screen showed a group of people cheering in a polite, yet enthusiastic manner. At the bottom of the screen, and 800 number urged viewers to call now or go online to lock in their special introductory price. Peter reached over and picked up his box of greasy veggie lo mein, relaxing back into his recliner and letting the Icy Hot work its magic, He closed his eyes, savoring the taste of his shitty noodles until a familiar voice ripped him from his reverie.

“I know what it is like to take a wrong turn,” the voice said. “I know what it is to be confused, to have the lines of right and wrong blur in front of you. I know what it is to fall so far that you don’t just lose focus on what is good and right, you lose focus on yourself. You lose your very humanity.”

Peter opened his eyes, a noodle still hanging from his lips, to see Harry Osbourne holding a microphone, addressing the studio audience.

“My friends,” Harry continued, “I have looked into the very eyes of the goblins that haunt the night, and I have seen myself reflected.”

With a wet slurp, Peter sucked the noodle into his mouth and leaned forward.

Harry extended his hand to the audience. “I mean, let’s face it, we’ve all done the wrong thing once in a while. Who here can say they are entirely innocent? Are you, sir? You? I seem to recall a certain long-haired and bearded fellow who said ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ I don’t recall Jesus following that up with hurling a rock at the poor man, do you?”

A polite wave of laughter sweeps across the crowd as the television warns him that supplies are limited. Harry laughs as well, the same laugh he used to use to seduce cheerleaders with back at Midtown High. Peter has seen it a hundred times, the confident laugh of a guy that knows his prey is in the palm of his hand.

“So we’ve all sinned. We’re sinners. We. Are. Sinners” Harry said, pacing across the stage, holding a finger up for effect at the last word. “But once we have sinned, are we done for? Is that all there is for us, or is there redemption right around the corner? And if sinners can find redemption, if they can get up off the ground like the snakes they are start to walk on two legs again, what hardships must they overcome to walk once more? And, more importantly, what tools have they employed that all of us can benefit from?”

Peter rolled his eyes and went back to his noodles. Harry-Fucking-Osborn and the Osborn Method, the latest fad self-help bullshit. He couldn’t tell if his stomach was twisting from the noodles or from the sweet scent of bullshit drifting from the TV.

Since last he was in prison, Harry had put on a few pounds, starting to round out his midsection the way that forty-year olds did. He still had the sharp jaw and winning smile of his youth, but his hair had followed Norman’s Osborn’s in retreat, giving him one hell of a forehead. Peter listened idly as Harry pitched gave his best pitch, complete with testimonials, nearly howling in laugher as a video of an orange-suited Herman Shultz spoke to the audience from Rikers Island. Without his gear, The Shocker wasn’t high profile enough to be tossed in the Vault, and had to serve time in the most embarrassing place a super-villain could find himself: general population.

“I was a bad man,” Herman began, his hands in cuffs and prison guards standing on either side of him. “I didn’t respect myself, or the world around me. But after reading ‘The Osborn Way: Ten Steps to Better Living’ I came to realize that I wasn’t just robbing the world, I was robbing myself… of happiness. Now I know—“

A special alert bulletin suddenly cut into the program, but Peter missed the beginning of it, laughing so hard that he dropped his noodles completely. When he could, he glanced up to see an aging white man with well combed hair speaking rapidly into the camera while an image of a burning building filled the monitor behind him. He leaned back in his chair, shooting a web at the fridge to open the door, and then a second to pull himself a beer. He shot one more web-bullet at the fridge to close it once more before giving the newcast his attention.

“..take you live downtown, where Trish Tilby stands by. Trish?”

“Trish!” Peter said, flipping the cap off his beer with his thumb and lifting his bottle into the air in salute.

The scene flicked to Trish standing downtown, surrounded by emergency crews. Her usually well-groomed hair was in a mess due to the wind, and though she was talking, no sound came through the feed at all. Peter took a swig of his beer, thinking the storefront behind Trish looked familiar, right as the audio finally kicked in.

“…an attack by the combined forces of Venom and Rhino have taken their toll on the headquarters of the Fantastic Four. Fire has engulfed the several floors, and rescue crews are steadily moving into position. Police have called an evactuation order for five blocks around the Baxter Building, and SHIELD is dispatching rescue and containment crews as we speak.”

Peter dropped both beer and sprang across the small room before picking up the television set with both hands, staring into it.

“No,” he said softly, watching as the camera showed the burning building. As Trish answered questions from the anchorman, he could see a black form explode from one of the windows, its face twisting toward the camera with wide-white eye and tooth filled maw. It roared before spinning black webs and propelling itself into the sky. A sudden crash brought the camera back to street level, where the side of the Baxter Building exploded outward. The Rhino charged into the street, tearing the pavement up as he skidded to a halt.

“What the fuck?” Peter said, standing on the table held his television, the set gripped in both hands. It was the same Rhino he had taken down a few days earlier, of that there was no doubt. He could clearly see Alexei’s face in in the half-assed attempt at a mas. But he was bigger, somehow. And not just big, enormous, carrying what Peter assumed would be the combined mass of both Juggernaut and an incredibly ticked off Bruce Banner.

More than three times the size just a few days ago.

“Steve, get to cover! Run! Run!” Trish screaming, people screaming. The camera wheeled off of Rhino and up to the left, where the Baxter Building lets out an audible groan. For the third time in his lifetime, Peter watches dumbstruck as one of the highlights of the New York City skyline shakes, shudders, and ultimately collapses.

A moment later his window is open and he is jumping into the sky, pulling on his costume while swinging for Manhattan Island.

###

**June 4 rd 2015 – 5:24 PM**

He works relentlessly through the night and into the next day, assisting the first responders with anything and everything he can. Others come out of the woodwork as well, first a trickle, and then all the costumed heroes the Fantastic Four had befriended over the years. Their colors streaked with ash and soot, they don’t look as heroic as they once did. Mostly, they are the old crew. He spots Iron Fist helping search crews look for survivors while Luke Cage lifts an enormous hunk of concrete from the wreckage. Hank Pym has brought out the old Giant Man tights, lifting sections of rubble too big for Luke or the crane crews to handle. At some point, he notices Bobby standing next to him, concealed under his ice skin. The two nod at each other but don’t say a word, just getting to work and sifting through the refuse, looking for their fallen friends.

It is Peter that pulls Ben from the rubble.

“Iceman!” Peter screams, lifting a something that looks like the remains of an enormous metal claw into the sky, lifting it off the orange-rock form and tossing it to the side. “I found Ben!”

Peter hops down to the side of Ben Grim and reaches down to touch him. At the slightest pressure from his fingers, some of the Thing’s rocky hide turns to dust, flying away in the wind. The is a flash of cold from behind, and Peter knows that Bobby is there.

“He’s hurt, Bobby,” Peter says softly, not wanting to touch his friends still form. As if hearing him, the rocks rumble and move a bit, a pained groan coming from below.

Bobby kneels down next to Peter. “Ben?”

“That you hothead?” Ben Grim askes, two slots Peter thought were just rocks roll back to reveal the eyes of Ben Grimm.

“Not quite, big guy.” Iceman said.

“You two sound alike.” Ben coughs, the first time Peter has ever heard him cough. As he does, part of his body cracks off, stones tumbling from his hide and turning to orange dust where they hit the ground. A crowd is beginning to form, and someone is calling for paramedics. “Did Franky get the others out?”

Peter shook his head. “We haven’t found anyone, Ben. Just you.”

The Thing’s head bobs a second, shaking more of the orange dust free. “Franklin got the portal open, he wasn’t sure where to though. Get the others through, Johnny and Suzie and…”

Another violent cough ripped through Ben, sending a shower of dust in all directions. When he stopped coughing, the Thing looked only half as big as he had before.

“That’s when that big Rhino thing came in. I jumped off the platform while Franky did his thing. Then Venom… I had to buy the others time.” Ben Shook his head, a spray of orange dust releasing from the grooves of his neck. “He shot me something, some kind of funny light that tickled. The one with the fishbowl on his head.”

“Mysterio?” Peter asked, stunned. “Mysterio shot you with something?”

Ben nodded. Peter couldn’t tell if he was aware of the dust or not.

“Ben, you need to sit still. Don’t move,” Peter said. “You’re not solid anymore, buddy.”

“It’s okay, Pete,” Ben said, looking up to him. “I think I’m gonna be alright. Don’t you worry about me.”

Ben Grimm looked up to Peter and smiled. A second later, his face collapsed in on itself.

“Ben!” Peter screamed, reaching forward, but all he did was sweep his arms through orange dust. Within seconds, all that remained of Ben Grimm was a dusty pair or blue pants with a stylized four and an orange plume carried off by the afternoon wind. Peter stood and watched it blow away, pushing away Bobby’s hand and walking numbly out of the ruins of the building.

There were emergency crews everywhere, and they in turn were surrounded by streams of reporters and thousands of people pushing against the barricades to watch. Peter walked numbly through the press of officials, ignoring the people shouting his name and asking for him to comment. He pushed the hands away, adrift in the sea of people.

“Obama didn’t do this,” he said lamely to the reporters before hopping up on top of one of the police transports to escape the press of people. He was tired and his muscles hurt. He couldn’t even begin to register what had happened on an emotional scale. Reed had been dead for years now, but now Ben, too? And what had happened to Sue, Johnny, and Franklin? Franklin had taken his old man’s position in the Fantastic Four after Reed died. Had he been able to save them?

Mysterio. Rhino. Venom. All part of his buffet of enemies. How in the hell had those losers taken down the Fantastic Four, one of the three preeminent super hero teams in the world? The thought was ludicrous, almost as outrageous as saying Paste Pot Pete had taken out the Avengers.

He stood again, glancing over the sea of faces watching the ruins of the Baxter Building. By now, someone was sure to have broken the news of Ben. While Johnny had long been Peter’s best friend on the team, he’d always gotten along really well with Ben as well. Reed and Sue had their own thing going, and while Peter could talk science with Reed, the age difference was a thing between them. It had never been that way with Ben. Ben might have ten years on Peter, but even back then, he’d never treated Peter as anything other than the man he was.

He was about to turn back to the building, to get back to digging through the rubble, when his eyes swept across a familiar face in the crowd. The man’s eyes locked on Peter’s as well, before turning and pushing through the crowd, making for an alleyway.

“Marko,” Peter hissed, and launched himself into the air.

**June 4 th 2015 – 6:03 PM**

“Marko!” Peter screamed for the fifth time This time, however, he followed it up by catching Flint’s jaw with a solid uppercut, launching the man into the air before flipping back, landing on the palms of his hands and driving both feet into Flints gut as he lifted in the air. Marko hit the brick wall behind him with enough force to crack the thing wide open, before sliding back to the ground. Peter sprang from his handstand, flipping in the air and landed on the edge of dumpster, crouching and staring at Flint.

“You clearly don’t understand how this is played,” Peter said. “I scream Marko, you yell Polo, and we have fun. Deviating from this simple formula will result in owies.”

Flint’s body fuzzed for a moment, bits flowing into sand before reforming. Unlike Peter, the Sandman looked exactly the same as the first day they’d ever fought, as if age couldn’t touch him. Peter actually hoped that Marko was feeling spry today. He was itching for a fight. There was nothing more that he would like to do right now than tear a punk apart.

“I’m not looking for a fight, web head.” Marko said. Fully reformed, he was standing again without actually having to stand up. “And I ain’t responsible for what happened.”

“Right,” Peter said, tense, ready to strike. “You’re just a super-powered Lookie Lou, huh?”

Flint shook his head. “No, not that either. I’ve been here all night. I was trying to stop that shit from happening.”

 “You know what, Flint? Usually I just do the fighting thing because that’s all you fucks understand. This time, though? I am going to enjoy beating the shit out of you.”

Flint frowned, shaking his head at him. “Not your usual banter.”

“I’m not in the mood,” Peter sprang forward, arms outstretched, but Flint was ready. He extended his hands and they became a funnel of sand. Even with the warning from his spider-sense, Peter couldn’t adjust his trajectory in time, and the column of sand slammed into him, throwing him back against a wall.

“Damn it, Spider-Man, enough!” Sandman said. “I’m serious, I had nothing to do with this.”

Peter launched up in a spray of sand, covering the distance while Flint reformed his arms, punching him twice in the face before it too lost substance. Peter was used to this, though, and sprang back. Above the alley, an old firetower rested above their heads. Peter latched on to it with twin web-lines.

“I called the Fantastic Four, tried to warn them,” Marko yelled as Peter latched on. “I tried to stop this from happening!”

“You what?” Peter asked. He was shaking with rage, ready to pull the water down and solidify the sandman, but there was some tone in Marko’s voice that registered with him, a note of desperation and honesty that he’d only heard a few times before. “Explain it to me, now!”

“Someone is trying to put the old crew back together again,” Flint explained, his arms reforming fully. “They tried to rope me in as well, but I am one hundred percent legit now. I have been since I got out of the Vault last time.”

“You. Sandman. You tried to warn the Fantastic Four that they were about to be attacked.”

Flint nodded and stepped toward him, arm raised, palms showing. “Spidey, I didn’t have anything to do with this. I’ve gone clean.”

“Are you for real?” Peter asked, letting go of the web-lines and hopping back on to the ground. “What, did you swallow the life is hard, daddy didn’t love me enough bullshit that Osborn is selling?”

“Hey,” Flint snapped, anger flashing in his voice. “If anyone has the right to bitch about Daddy issues, it is Harry-Fucking-Osborn.”

They stared at each other for a long moment.

“Alright, I’ll give you that,” Peter said. “But why should I believe you, Marko?”

“You really think I could pull that off?” Flint asked, motioning back in the direction of where the Baxter Building once stood. “Even at my best, you think I could do that? Someone is pulling the strings again, Web-head, and putting the Six in motion in ways they’ve never worked before. If he wasn’t dead, I would say it was Octavius. But this is beyond the Doctor, too. This is a whole new level of bullshit on the level that they call the Avengers, and that is at least one or two steps above my pay grade.”

Peter glanced down the alley. He hated it when bad guys made sense.

“So why warn them?” Peter asked.

“Because I’m not an asshole, asshole.” Flint said. “You know, I didn’t grow up thinking I’d become some super-power freak criminal. Hell, I wanted to be a cop. And a space ranger. But mostly a cop. Things just broke bad for me.”

“Yeah, poor you.”

“Hey, that’s not an excuse,” Flint said with force. “I own up that I wasn’t strong enough to do the right thing. I am not a victim of circumstance, I let it happen. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get up and do the right thing now.”

“You looking for a pardon?”

“Don’t need one,” Flint said. “As far as the State is concerned, I’ve done my time. But that doesn’t mean shit if I can’t look my daughter in the eyes and see the weak piece of shit I used to be reflected in them.”

It was like Marko had punched him in the gut, but hurt far worse than if he’d used his fist. Peter nodded, reluctantly.

“Alright, Marko,” he said after a moment. “I believe you.”

“Help me, then.”

Peter stared at him. He wondered if Flint could see the shock through his mask.

“You want to team up… with me?”

“Fuck, Spidey, you’re the only member of the boy-scout club I know, aside from a few fist fights here and there. This shit is beyond me, and I don’t know where else to go. Took me long enough to get your attention back at the Baxter Building. I’ve been trying to subtly make your eyeline since dawn.”

“I’ve been a little busy.” Peter snapped. “What did Mysterio do to Ben?”

“Ben?”

“The big orange rock guy,” Peter said. “The fucking Thing.”

Flint shook his head. “I don’t know. But I know it has something to do with Hammer Industries. That’s where all of this is coming through, the offers, the contracts.”

“The tech company? Why in the hell—“

“Justin Hammer has been supplying villains for years,” Flint interrupted. “Whenever someone needs a bit of tech or some resources to back up taking one of you clowns down, Hammer has always been someone you could turn to if you had the right connections. Who do think financed half of the shit Otto came up with? That shit isn’t exactly cheap.”

Peter considered for a moment, then nodded. “I can talk to someone who knows all there is to know about Hammer Industries. He flips his shit if you ever compare his stuff to Hammertech.”

“Tony Stark?”

Peter nodded. “We go way back. But, last I heard, the Avengers are out in fucking Pangu Pangu, saving little old ladies from behind hit by jaywalking asteroids, or some bullshit. We’re going to have to sit on this until they get back.”

Flint sighed, then nodded. “Yeah, I can do that. You have a number I can contact you at?”

With a sigh, Peter rattled off his number. Part of Flint’s chest turned to sand, and a Starkphone slid out of the inside of his body. Taking the phone in hand, Flint pressed at the screen. It made Peter want to scream; even the fucking Sandman had a smartphone.

A moment later, Peter felt the phone in his hidden pocket buzz, and the theme to Ducktales sounded softly in the air.

“Really?” Flint asked as Peter slipped out his phone and thumbed the ignore button. He double checked to make sure it logged Marko’s number.

“Keep me up to date if anything else falls in your lap,” Peter said, glancing up at the buildings surrounding them.

“This works both ways, webhead,” Sandman screamed up after him as Peter flipped himself skyward. A moment later he was webbing his way home for Brooklyn, too tired to get another quip in.

 


	4. Mayday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New York City is gripped by a crime wave. Peter finds some time in the park with his daughter, before and old friend lights up the sky.

**Chapter Four:**

**Sunday - June 7th 2015 – 4:55 PM**

Peter dangled from a tree, his knees locked tight around a branch while holding on to May’s wrists and swinging her back and forth. May laughed and screamed with pleasure as he swung her higher and higher, a delight so innocent and pure that pretty soon he was laughing along with her.

“Higher!” she screamed, and Peter obliged, pumping hard with his legs until the swinging well beyond the point of safety, arcing above the limb. Without missing a beat, Peter let go with his knees, the momentum carrying them into the lower branches of the tree a couple of feet. He snagged May in a tight hug and landed deftly on his feet, his spider-given powers finally good for something.

May’s face was a mix of terror and glee, shocked at the acrobatics. They had attracted a few watchers in the park, but Peter could care less. He had his baby in his arms. The fact that he was Spider-Man could be written across the very sky and he wouldn’t care.

“Again!” May yelled, hugging him tightly.

Peter laughed and dropped out of the tree, walking over to where he left his shoes and stepping into them again without letting her go.

“I don’t think we have time, Mayday. Mommy is going to be here soon.”

May immediately started to pout, and Peter laughed. “Yeah, I feel the same way.”

“I guess we don’t have time for ice cream,” May said dramatically, craning her head to look forlornly at a vendor near the fountain. Peter rolled his eyes at the six-year old’s manipulation.

“We don’t?” He said, then shook his head, feigning a look of dejection. “I thought we did, and I was going to go buy us some, but if you think we don’t have time…”

May’s eyes shot wide and then she quickly shook her head. “No, no. We have time. We have time Daddy! I want a Mickey Bar!”

Peter grinned and walked over to the vendor, buying them both an overpriced Mickey bar. After hot dogs, the Met, subway fair, a balloon, and ice cream, he was sure to be eating ramen for the next week, but it was worth it. To be fair, it wouldn’t mean much of a change, anyway.

They sat on a bench, Peter wrapping and arm around his girl, smiling and watching as she sucked on one of the chocolate ears. He could stare at her for hours, the quiet dark haired little girl that really was the center of his world.

“May,” he asked after a moment, “are you happy?”

She looked up at him with chocolate smeared lips and nodded. “Did you see the TV?”

Peter shook his head, letting her take control of the conversation. “No, I accidently broke my TV a few days ago.”

“Daddy!”

Peter grinned. “It was an accident! Why do you ask?”

“Spider-Man is on TV a lot. Mommy turns it up every time he’s on,” May said. Peter couldn’t help but smile. The destruction of the Baxter Building and the absence of the Avengers had brought every lowlife in New York out of hiding, even a couple of costumed ones. It had been a busy couple of nights.

“Do you like Spider-Man, baby?”

May nodded enthusiastically. “He’s my favorite. After Black Widow.”

Peter nearly choked on his ice cream, then laughed softly. Natasha would never let him forget it, is she had overheard..

“And Thor. Thor is pretty.”

He had to put a hand over his mouth to not laugh outright. He could almost hear the angry bellowing of Goldilocks’ protestations.

“And Iron Man. Iron Man is SO COOL!” May said, then mimicked the way Iron Man’s thrusters worked with her free hand.

“Alright, alright,” Peter said, stopping her before she could list other favorites over himself. “I get the picture. You like the super-heroes.”

May nodded a lot. “I like the ones from before. The new ones are weird. They have funny names and stuff.”

“No easy names like Spider-Man and Iron Man, huh?”

May nodded again. “Keep it simple. Is there a Pony-Man?”

Peter chuckled. “I don’t think so, baby.”

“When I grow up and get super powers, I want to be Pony-Girl,” May said with a nod, then smiled and waved. “Mommy!”

Peter followed May’s look to where Mary Jane entered the park. Standing on the sidewalk beyond the park grounds, John Jameson waited. Former astronaut and current Big Box store manager locked eyes on each other. There was no love lost between the two of them. Peter despised John about as much as he hated the elder Jameson.

“You got everything, baby?” Peter asked, turning back to his daughter. May nodded and stood up, the ears eaten off her ice cream and the rest melting quickly down the stick. Peter picked up her little backpack and slung it over his shoulder, taking May by one hand and walking her over to her mother.

“Hi, MJ,” he said as they got close. Age had barely touched Mary Jane, as slim and gorgeous as he could remember. He could only imagine what her regimen was these days, keeping herself in shape for the recurring roles she kept landing. So far, nothing had stuck long term, but she was constantly popping up on crime procedurals and medical dramas.

“Hi Baby!” MJ said, ignoring Peter completely until May ran in for her hug. After nearly being tackled by the girl, MJ stood tall and put a hand on her shoulder, her face taking a grim cast and looking directly into Peter’s eyes. “Hello, Peter.”

Hard stare. Great. He was in trouble.

“So, I take it there is a problem?” Peter asked.

“Your check bounced,” Mary Jane said. “Again.”

Peter sighed and shook his head. “No, not possible. I have more than enough to—“

Mary Jane held her hand up. “Not here. Not in front of May. In fact, not at all period. I think it is best that we just let the courts handle collecting.”

Peter took a deep breath and nodded “Fine, MJ whatever you want.”

Mary Jane looked down to May. “Say goodbye to your father, Mayday.”

“Bye Daddy!” May wrapped her arms around his neck as he kneeled down. He hugged her tight, closing his eyes, trying to keep her close as long as he could. If he could not let go, maybe the world would burn away around them, and he could just hug her forever.

“By Baby,” he said softly when he heard MJ politely, yet pointedly, clear her throat. “I’ll see you next weekend.”

“Okay, Daddy!”

He fell to his ass as May let go of him and took MJ’s hand, babbling about the dinosaurs as they walked away. Peter watched them go, every step tearing into his heart. Only when they reached the sidewalk and John had taken May’s other hand did Mary Jane look back. He expected to see her anger, her hate, but instead all he could see was concern, the same look she used to get when he would go out for patrol on the night. She watched him for a moment, then mouthed something wordlessly to him.  Peter felt himself saying the words she’d said so many times.

“Go get ‘em, Tiger.”

***

 

**Monday - June 8th 2015 – 2:16 AM**

 

Peter flipped up on Bob’s shoulders, raising both legs and kicking Bob 2 and Bob 3 in the face before sliding down the front of Bob’s body until his palms touched the floor. Wrapping his legs around Bob’s neck, he flipped forward and slammed him into the ground before regaining his feet.

A soft tingle alerted to the presence of Bob the Sneaky, just as Bob the Enormous squared off against him. Peter launched into the air as Sneaky Bob charged, landed and dropkicked him in the ass to propel him into Big Boy Bob. After a few seconds and the generous application of tactical web fluid, Bob-normous and Sneaky Bob were embraced in a position that could only bring them both grief in jail.

He rolled back and began shooting impact shots at the others.

“One, two, three, and you make four!” He said, popping each one in the face with his webbing. “I don’t know if this counts as a money shot, guys. I’ve never had this stuff tested to find out exactly what it is. For all I know, I’ve impregnated half of New York by now. But I do know this, it sure is sticky!”

Using both hands he relaxed his wrists to the launchers stretched, releasing wide arcs of webbing into the gang he’d dubbed ‘Bob and Bobs.’ The six of them struggled and screamed out threats, except for one who just wept.

“Think I should leave a card, or do you think the cops can detect who strung you guys up?” Peter asked, hopping up to the side of a building. “Be a peach and let them know I was here, ‘kay?”

He almost felt young again. There were so many assholes trying to take advantage of the absence of both the Fantastic Four and the Avengers that he was busier than he had been in the better part of a decade. It was all mostly low level street stuff, but it was constant and consistent. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Rhino or Venom, and none of the punks he’d beaten mostly senseless knew anything of the Sinister Six.

It was something sweeping across the entire city. Every gangsta, crook, mobster, malcontent, and inconsiderate shitbag with a crime to commit had come out of hiding. No part of the tri-state area was untouched. The sound of sirens hung constant in the air as emergency services desperately tried to respond, but across the city, police and fire crews were tapped out. Two days in, and an odd thing started to happen. The old neighborhood heroes began to return, filling the void left by the death of the Fantastic Four and the absence of the Avengers. For the first time in forever, the loners showed their faces and stood tall against the criminal element.

And once again, Spidey was on top.

He flipped through the air, traveling the canyons of the city, yelling with excitement as he flew. He twisted and vaulted, spinning in midair and letting freefall take him before denying gravity’s embrace with a well-timed flick of his wrist. It was like twenty years had been wiped clean, his body responding to his enthusiasm, banishing the twinges and aches, the strained muscles and painful nerves. Old scars didn’t ache so much, and the strained feeling in his body from years of broken bones was absent altogether. He actually felt like Spider-Man again, not some middle-aged douchebag in increasingly tighter spandex.

A flash of light erupted across the horizon, blasting out ward before forming into a single jet of flame rising high into the night across the river. Peter launched himself high into the air, twisting and spinning as high rises shot past, landing on the ledge of one of the taller.  A streak of light, blazing straight up into the sky. The blast trail was too tight to be a missile. Maybe someone had launched a rocket?

The blast of flame suddenly turned ninety degrees in the sky, and began to race across the river. He watched as it flew at incredible speed, zeroing in on Manhattan. Peter cursed and threw himself into the air, spinning his webs and racing south. There was no way that was a rocket, and if it was a missile, it was enormous. He pushed himself as hard as he could, racing through the streets in a desperate attempt to reach the thing.

It began to descend, and Peter lost sight of it for a moment as it passed behind a building. He launched himself high above the rooftops, arcing forward and scanning the horizon until he caught sight of it, and nearly choked. It was zig-zagging around buildings, twisting along the streets a couple of hundred feet above the ground.

“What the hell?” Peter yelled before shooting twin lines, letting gravity take him to their max extension before shooting him forward again at incredible speed. Angling his body, he shot a tight line on a nearby building, using it as a fulcrum to arc himself in the right direction before corkscrewing through the air. Only when his momentum began to slow did he launch new lines, zipping along as fast as his arms could pull him. He took a corner and then suddenly it was on him, racing past him in a blaze of light, a hazy human form twisting within.

Peter landed on the side of a building, impacting it so hard the glass nearly cracked.

“Johnny!” He watched as the trail of Human Torch shot upward again. He launched forward and shot his webs, racing after his flaming friend. The Torch shot high, rising above the Empire State Building before hovering, the form twisting in air and facing his direction.

Peter swung for the building, gaining some altitude before vaulting himself in a graceful arc and landing on the 86th floor observation platform. He watched as the living blaze dropped again, looping around the building twice before hovering above the observation deck and slowly descending. Peter shielded his eyes, staring into the inferno, and suddenly became suspicious that this was actually Johnny Storm. He wasn’t sure what tipped him off at first. Maybe it was a variance in the pattern of the fire, or the temperature of the heat washing off the figure.

Peter suspected, however, that it was the burning outline of breasts within the flames.

The blaze landed and the flames dispersed, revealing the woman within. Peter pulled off his mask and stepped forward, a smile spreading across his face.

“Angel!” he took two steps forward and pulled Firestar into a close hug.

Angelica Jones laughed and hugged him back, throwing her arms around his neck. After a moment’s squeeze he, held her at arm’s length and shook his head. She still wore the same old costume, the soft yellow with red flames up the arms and legs, a flared red mask covering part of her face. During her time with the New Warriors, she had adopted some blue and red thing, but apparently had decided to go classic. Ever a bit shy about her body, her costume still concealed her from neck to toe, but it was form fitting enough so that Peter could get a look at every curve. He couldn’t help but admire how much she’d filled that costume since they were kids.

“Pete,” she said, pulling him to hug him again and then kissing him on the cheek before releasing him. “Twenty minutes. I am impressed.”

Peter motioned up at the sky. “That was for me?”

Angel grinned and slipped her mask up into her hair. “I figured you’d be keeping an eye out for Johnny Storm after what happened. You never could tell us apart in flight.”

“Well, you found me,“ Peter hopped on to a bench and crouched on it. “What can I do for you, Miss Jones?”

Angel smiled and sat next to him. “You sound good, Pete. I heard you’d gotten moody in your dotage.”

Peter shrugged it off and shook his head. “All lies, perpetuated by assholes and idiots.”

“Like Bobby?”

“The very epitome of both asshole and idiot,” Peter said. “How are you? I haven’t seen you since—“

“Since Carnage,” Angel said with a smile. “That… that was a rough one.”

“You kind of dropped off the radar after that. I thought we’d be seeing more of you.” Peter sat normal on the bench, grinning at her. “Thanks, by the way. You really saved my ass with that.”

Angel glanced out to the city and shrugged. “There were some people that weren’t too happy with me being around. Your wife in particular has never seemed to fond of me.”

“Ex-wife,” Peter said. “And yeah, MJ was always really nervous around red heads.”

“Never mind we’ve been friends for years, huh?”

“You know how women are. When you got something like all this,” Peter said, motioning to himself, “you make sure to mark your territory.”

That brought a little snort from Angel, followed by laughter. He could always make her snort, a funny little sound that he enjoyed pulling out of her as much as she denied doing it.

“I finished off school after, and started teaching up in Rochester,” she said. “Pretty much been there ever since, on the B-Team. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“When Kitty was in charge, it was fine,” Angel said. “We’ve always gotten along, although I swear she thinks I want to jump Bobby. Once we got it clear that there was nothing between us through her head, everything was great.”

“And then?”

Angel sighed and leaned forward. “And then Scott and Emma showed up and took over again.”

Peter put a hand on her shoulder. The White Queen had been responsible for some of the hardest years of Angel’s life, twisting and tormenting the girl and turning her into a weapon along with other children at the Massachusetts Academy. When Angel had finally broken free of the White Queen’s grip, she’d turned to her friend Robert Drake, which led to their summer as a team. Even though the White Queen was no more and Emma Frost had long since proven herself as a reformed villain, Peter had no doubt that the animosity between her and Angelica was still alive and well.

“Not all is well in the house Xavier built, then.”

Angel shook her head, “Not at all. When I saw what happened with the Baxter Building, and heard that there was a crime wave rising in the city, I thought… well, damn, Pete. It’s been a while, you know, but I was thinking…”

“Thinking that maybe we could hit it again?” Peter finished for her. Angel smiled at him and then shook her head.

“It’s stupid, right? Here I am facing down forty and I want to go beat up some street thugs.”

“You see what I am doing every night, right?” Peter said. “Do you need a place to stay?”

“No. After my dad died, I kept the place in Queens,” Angel said, leaning against him. Peter smiled and wrapped am arm around her, savoring the soft heat still pouring off her body. She rested her head against his chest, the scent of her hair drifting up. She still used that same shampoo, a distinctive scent that always made him think of her when he smelled it. He closed his eyes for a moment and it really felt like it was twenty years ago, only Angel was holding him and comforting him over the loss of Gwen.

“What is it, Angel?” Peter asked. She was leaning into him for support, for something she could hold on too. “What happened?”

Angel looked up to him. He could see fear in her eyes, fear and sadness.

“It’s nothing.” She took a deep breath and smiled, pushing the dark emotions back. “Something is going on, but I just… I can’t talk about it yet, Pete.”

Peter smiled gently. “When you can, I’m here.”

She put a hand against his chest and nodded, a sad smile on her face. “I knew you would be.”

They sat in silence for a moment, looking out at the skyline, taking comfort in each other’s presence. It was the first time Peter had done anything approaching touching a woman in more than three years, and as ashamed of it as he was, he was hyper aware of her breast pressed against his chest. If he didn’t move soon, his suit was going to get him into a very awkward situation.

“So, what do you say?” Angel asked. “Want to team up?”

He grinned and leaned forward, kissing her forehead. “You got it, hot stuff. Think we should give Frosty a call also?”

Angel grinned up at him. “Can we? You don’t mind?”

“If he’s not too busy antiquing with his boyfriend in the Village, we might be able to convince him to tag along.”

Angel laughed and sat up, punching him in the shoulder. “You’re such an asshole, Peter.”

“Made you laugh,” he said with a grin, leaning forward with his elbows in his lap to conceal what her proximity had done to him.

“There’s more,” Angel said, walking to the edge of the platform and looking over the city. “Felicia Hardy got in contact with me.”

“The Black Cat?” Peter said nervously. He hadn’t seen Felicia in more than a decade. “She’s still around?”

“Retired,” Angel said. “We worked together a long time ago, and always kept in contact. She came to me about a week ago, asking if I could get her some tech… some very specific kinds of tech, the kind you use to break into highly, highly secure facilities. I wouldn’t help up her unless she spilled the beans, but…”

“What is it?” Peter asked. “What’ little Miss Kitty gotten herself into?”

Angela turned and looked to him. “Someone has hired her to break into the Triskellion.”

Peter blinked and shook his head. “She isn’t that stu—“

“Yeah, she is,” Angela interrupted. “Justin Hammer has enough money to make her very, very stupid.”

Peter stood up, his arousal forgotten. “Hammer? Hammer hired Felicia?”

Angela nodded, tilting her head curiously. “Why? Does that mean something to you.”

Peter sighed and stood beside her, looking out over the city.

“Yeah. It means something really, really bad. I am just not sure what yet.”


	5. Like Sands Through the Hourglass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flint Marko is on the run. Can Spidey save him before half of the Sinister Six catches up?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Minor Character Death  
> \- Bit of Gore.  
> \- Comedic Nutshot

**Chapter Five:**

**Wednesday – June 24 th, 2015 – 2:49 PM**

Peter raced through the streets as if the Devil himself were swinging behind him.

It had started out such a wonderful day. He woke up, had the last of his cold cereal from the food bank, and got to the communal shower in time to actually have some hot water. Not only that, but the person living on the other side of the shower wall was in the mood to blast Black Sabbath, so he got sing in the shower for the first time that he could remember. After that, he met Angelica for coffee before hitting the streets with her and Bobby.

He swung high in an arc and flipped into the air, extending his arms and catching a bit of an updraft. People rushed to the windows of the building as he shot past, tracking him with phones and cheering at him through open windows. People below pointed up in the sky again, something that hadn’t happened in years. He didn’t know where J. Jonah Jameson was these days, but he was sure that if the old man was watching the news, he was screaming in frustration. The press was in love with Spidey again, and Peter felt on top of the world.

He let another web fly, using it to yank himself forward before using a flagpole to gain enough momentum to corkscrew down the street. If only Peter’s life was going as well as Spider-Man’s, things would be great. But Peter Parker, former science genius and current pathetic loser, had been late four times in the last week, and missed half of an entire shift due to the villainous shenanigans in the city. He had to be at work at three, and if he was late again, he was pretty sure that would be the end of it.

He shot high into the sky again, landing atop an apartment complex, the familiar sign of his Big Box employment just down the street. Hoping on one foot, he pulled his boot off and slipped the backpack off his shoulder just as his phone began to buzz.

“Not now,” he said, getting the boot off and sliding to his ass to pull the other one off. The phone continued to buzz, so he pulled it from its pouch and checked the caller id on the outside of the shell.

The word “MARKO” came back with a string of numbers behind it.

“Fuck,” Peter said, then put the phone to his ear. “Not a good time, Marko.”

All he could hear was heavy breathing and the sound of crashing come from the receiver.

“Marko?”

A sudden roar so loud it hurt his ear ripped through the phone, followed by the sound of something collapsing. Peter jumped and looked around from his vantage, but could see no signs of destruction on the horizon. “Sandman?”

“They’re after me, webhead!” Flint’s voice, panicked. “Help!”

“Slow down, Marko. Where are you?”

“Lower Manhattan,” Marko said. His next words were drowned out by a whooshing sound, then the phone clattered on the ground. A maniacal laugh, Venom’s laugh, sounded from afar, before the wooshing returned and he could hear Flint’s breathing again. “Ground Zero, I am east of Ground Zero.”

Peter spun and looked west toward the river. “Can you make it to the Brooklyn Bridge?”

“I can try, hurry webhead!”

Peter jumped into the air, leaving his boots behind and swinging into the sky. He thumbed for his directory, finding Bobby’s number, but there was too much wind for him to get a message through. Cursing, he put his phone in its pocket while flipping through the air and raced toward the river with all the speed he could make.

It didn’t take long for him to find them. A dust storm raced across the eastbound lane of the bridge. Behind the dust, cars separated, tossed to the side as the enormous bulk of Rhino pushed across the bridge. Peter swung horizontally, attaching to the first tower and swinging outward before launching two new lines to drag himself in, aiming at the dust storm. Cars screeched to a halt as they were overtaken by the dust, only to be thrown aside or crushed completely by the charging Rhino.

Peter dove into the storm, though what could only be the body of Flint Marko, arms extended and ready to catch Rhino as she shot through. His spider-sense tingled, alerting of the danger ahead, but Peter ignored it, already figuring his trajectory and how he would need to twist to go under Rhino before webbing his ankles.

Something black and twisted slammed into him from the side, knocking him out of flight and out across the river. Peter desperately twisted, launching a web-line at the underside of the bridge as Venom swung upward.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Peter yelled, following his arc of descent and letting it vault him to other side of his bridge. The worst thing about Venom was that he didn’t register on Peter’s spider-sense, that he couldn’t detect—

Something slammed into him from below, driving him in to the underside of the bridge before releasing him. Peter began to fall to the river before inky black tendrils wrapped around him, ripping him back up and pulling him over the side of the bridge. Claws ripped as his chest as Venom drug him up to eye level, his maw wide and open, tongue lashing across Peter’s mask.

Peter gagged and tried not to wretch. Make not being susceptible to his spider-sense the second worse thing.

“Breath mints, ass-face!” Peter said and brought up his knee. Venom’s eyes shot wide as Peter connected to his groin, using all of his spider-enhanced strength to push the villains happy sacks back home. He sprang forward as Venom released him, the black suited nightmare falling off rail and onto the pavement, cradling his groin in the fetal position.

“Fuck, I hope that’s you in there, Eddie.” Peter said as he landed. “I’ve owed you that shot for a hell of a long time.”

Something cold under his feet brought him up short for looking for Flint, and he glanced down to see his toes. He even wiggled them to make sure.

“Fuck!” Peter yelled and jumped into the sky, crossing to the southernmost lane and racing after Rhino. That was his last pair of spidey-boots, and he really didn’t have the money to go make a new pair.

By the time he caught up, Rhino was already across the bridge, chasing the once again human form of Flint Marko into the streets of Brooklyn. Peter kept low, sling-shoting himself forward when he could until he got within range, then pegged Rhino in the back twice. He used the line to pull himself forward, flipping feet first and wrapping them around Rhino’s neck when he landed.

“Yee-Haww!” Peter screamed, arms flying wild to keep balance while the Rhino charged into an alley.

“Get off, runt!” Rhino screamed, grabbing a garbage dumpster in one hand as he raced by, then swinging it onto his own back to try and brush Peter off.

“Stupid, stupid,” Peter said and jumped up above the curve of the swinging dumpster, slamming into with both his feet as it went under him. Added to the strength of Alexei’s swing, the dumpster slammed into Rhino’s back with the force of a runaway toddler. Pavement cracked and flew into the air as Rhino went down, leaving a streak of broken street fifteen feet long.

From the end of the alley, Sandman twisted and looked back, the slowed to stop. A short swing later and Peter landed next to him.

“God damn, webhead,” Flint said, puffing hard and fighting to catch his breath. “I seriously thought I was done for.”

Peter glanced around at the people stopping, watching them. Phones were coming out.

“Yeah, don’t mention it,” he said. He felt a soft tingle in the base of his skull. “Flint, get down!”

Peter reached out to push Marko away, but it was too late. A beam of purple light raced from a nearby rooftop, striking Flint in the chest. Peter followed the path of the shot, seeing a purple cloaked figure above, a gleaming bowl where his head should be.

“Uh, that tickles?” Flint said, touching his chest.

Peter turned to look at him. “Are you alright?”

Flint nodded a couple of times and shrugged. “Yeah, I feel fine.”

“What happened? How did they find you?”

“I have no idea. This was another attempt to recruit me.” Flint coughed and shook his head. “You won’t believe who—“

Flint twisted his neck, a confused expression on his face.

“What is it?” Peter asked.

Flint coughed again, a stream of dust pouring from his mouth. His skin started to flake and crack, like mud drying.

“Jesus, Marko,” Peter said. “What’s happening to you?”

Sandman doubled over coughing, more dust flying out of his mouth. From down the alley, Peter could see the Rhino rising, his impossibly huge bulk lifting the angriest faces Peter could recall seeing since that last fight with MJ.

His spider-sense flared so strong that Peter was already jumping back. “Marko, get out of the way!”

Flint looked up and took a deep breath, his body beginning to turn to dust. Spidey flipped back twice and then sprang off his fingertip up to a streetlamp, watching the alley. Flint began to expand into his dust form, then screamed, a coarse, grainy sound that reminded Peter of sandpaper on wood. Across his expanding form, the sand was clumped and cracked, only bits of it breaking away.

“Flint!” Peter screamed.

Suddenly, the Sandman exploded as the Rhino charged through. Blood, muscle, and sand flew in all directions, covering the walls of the alley and the street below. Peter threw his hands up as a blast of sand and viscera washed over him. He fell back off the pole, making it to street level and trying to wipe the gook off his mask before his spider-sense flared again.

“FUCK YOU!” he heard Alexei yell before something hit him in the chest. Peter flew from the ground faster than he ever had, hitting a wall with enough force to knock him senseless. He was faintly aware of people standing over him and then a sudden pain in his arm before everything went quiet again.

When he came to his senses, he jumped out of the crater his body had formed on impact. His left glove was pulled down, exposing his forearm. Looking close, he could see the bruise and pinprick where some had shoved a needle into this arm.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Peter said, walking backward into the street. People stared at him, at the mess left behind in the alley.

“What did they do?” Peter asked one of the bystanders. “Did they shoot something in me?”

The man shook his head. “The one wearing the disco ball drew your blood, and then the black monster version of you came out of the sky and took him away.”

Peter turned in the street, rubbing his wrist. What remained of Flint Marko coated the entrance to the alley, piles of sand mixed with shredded remains of flesh and blood. In the distance, he could hear sirens begun their approach.

“Fuck!” Peter screamed and extended his hand, pulling himself into the sky.


	6. Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The loss of Ben Grimm and Flint Marko catches up with Peter, and he heads to The Cage to work through his feelings. Ditching Bobby at the bar, Pete finds out he's been evicted and Angelica steps up to take care of him.

**Chapter Six**

**Wednesday - June 24 th, 2015 -  11:15 PM**

There was a time when Peter wouldn’t step in to The Cage.

It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the bar. Tucked in a corner deep in Hell’s Kitchen, it was a well-known watering hole amongst the B-Listers in New York, a place where a hero could go without the cape and get a drink in peace. For the longest time, Pete’s pride had kept him from going more than once or twice, but over the years, pride had given way to the fact that Spider-Man was no longer top shit in the Big Apple. Between the construction of the Triskelion and the Avengers moving in full time, the days of overt villainy were done with, and Spidey’s time in the press was over.

Now he was something of a fixture in the place, even though it was well out of his way.

“Thanks, Luke,” Pete said as the massive bartender set a glass in front of him. He picked it up, tossing it back in with the practiced ease of a career drunk, letting the cheap whiskey wash away the feelings that refused to stay buried. He put the glass back on the table and tapped it, nodding to Luke again.

Behind Luke, centered in the main window of the bar, was a picture of Ben Grimm. Peter glanced down the counter, to the super-reinforced stool that was reserved special for Ben. On the counter in front of the stool, there was a beat brown fedora, surrounded by bits of paper. Notes left by all of Ben’s friends, his drinking buddies, his companions. Someone had added several bags of salted nuts, the only thing Ben said he could eat that still tasted the same. His massive Oktoberfest stein, filled for the last time. Peter tapped his glass again, not sure when he had emptied it.

Bobby put his hand over the glass as Luke brought the bottle out. “I think he’s fine for a minute, Luke. Let him have a breather.”

Luke Cage looked between Peter and Bobby, then poured the whiskey anyway. Bobby snatched his hand back, a shower of icy whiskey following its trail.

“You, I don’t know,” Luke said in his deep baritone. “Next time, you lose the hand.”

Peter chuckled while Bobby wiped his hand off on his sweater vest. “Thanks Luke.”

Cage nodded to him and moved down the bar, leaving the bottle behind. Peter picked up his glass then glanced to Bobby, noting the frown lines and his eyebrows, knit tightly together. He sighed and shook his head, taking a sip instead of knocking the glass back.

“Happy, Aunt May?”

“Yeah, I’m over the fucking moon,” Bobby said, facing forward in his stool. “Can’t you tell?”

“I didn’t invite you here for criticism,” Pete said.

“You didn’t invite me here at all,” Bobby noted, picking up his beer and draining half the glass. “What in the hell are you doing here anyway? Don’t you live in Brooklyn?”

“I like this place,” he said, looking around. “It suits me.”

“If you say so,” Bobby leaned forward on his elbows. “It’s not your fault, you know.”

“Don’t,” Peter said, glancing to his friend. “I know it isn’t my fault they’re dead. I’ve been down this road a couple of times. But you know as well as I do that it is my fault I couldn’t save them. Either of them.”

Bobby shook his head. “How could you have—“

“Because that’s what I do, Bobby.” Peter interrupted. “Are you going to tell me you go easy on yourself when you miss a save?”

As an answer Bobby drained the rest of his beer.

“That’s what I thought.” Peter took another sip, then thought better of it and tossed it back. He filled his glass again, then held it in his hand. It felt familiar, comfortable. A little bit of stability in his completely fucked up world. “I keep thinking about when Otto died.”

“Doc Ock?” Bobby asked, motioning Luke for another beer. “Why him, of all people?”

Peter took a deep breath, staring into the amber of the cheap liquor. “That’s how everyone was, you know? Big fucking celebration, the bad guy is dead, time to party. None of you actually took a second to think that one of the most brilliant minds that ever existed had just blown itself up.”

“Listen to what you just said,” Bobby said, then thanked Luke as his beer arrived. “The key phrase is ‘blown itself up.’”

“Fuck you, Bobby.” Peter said and drained his glass. “Otto was insane, no doubt, but he was also a genius like none of us will ever see again. You know, he wasn’t just good at robotics and applied mechanics. He was like Rembrandt or Tchaikovsky, a master of the subtle, of the little touches that turned something from merely good into a masterpiece. Do you know how much NASA has benefited from his designs? Do you think he’ll ever get credit for the medical scanning technology built off his work?”

“Wasn’t he using that scanning stuff to figure out how to drill a hole into the middle of the earth so he could extract power directly from the core in an attempt to blow something up?”

“Yeah, he was a little misguided,” Peter admitted. “Still, all anyone did was throw a party when he died. The same shit is going to go down with Marko, and I know for a fact Flint had turned his life around. Fuck, Bobby, he’s the one that told me someone as trying to rebuild the Six.”

Bobby nodded a little. “I hear you, buddy.”

“Am then there’s Ben,” Peter shook his head, rolling the empty glass in his hand. “You know, people always think that it was me and Johnny that hit it off big-time, but it wasn’t. Johnny was a spoiled little shit back then. He didn’t have time for some snotty punk kid. But Ben? When Reed would get bored of me, Ben and I would go do stuff. Bowling, sparring, whatever. Ben had this protective streak a mile wide, and even though I was the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, he could tell I was just a kid, and he wasn’t going to let a kid go out and get himself killed. He taught me so much, man.”

Bobby squeezed his shoulder. Peter could feel the tears threatening to overwhelm his eyes.

“I miss him, man. I miss him already.” Peter took a deep breath, putting down his glass and running a hand over his face before standing. “I need a smoke.”

“Seriously, Pete?” Bobby said, staring at him as he stood up. “You don’t—“

Peter tossed a twenty on the bar. “Don’t start, Bobby. I’m not in the mood. Just… give me a minute alone, alright?”

Peter left his friend behind and stepped out into the night air. It was a nice night, if not slightly muggy. Peter walked around to the side of the bar, leaning against the window and pulling out his pack of generic cigarettes. It was the first time he’d bought a pack in over a year, since the last time May had told him that he should quit. It was one of the more annoying habits she’d inherited from her mother, but unlike the scorn of MJ, the disappointment of May was actually effective.

He closed his eyes as he smoked, letting himself drift through his memories of both Sandman. It had been a long and brutal acquaintance over the years, most often filled with Peter getting the better over Flint, but occasionally falling for whatever foolery Flint had cooked up. There had always been something professional about him, though. Peter had never felt it had been overly personal between them, unlike his battles with Dock Oc or the Goblin. Sandman was a crook, plain and simple. Stopping crooks was what he did, and so they fought when they came across each other.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Peter opened his eyes to see Angelica standing in front of him. Her hair fell loose under a brown beret, and she wore a matching coat that hung to her hips. She looked good; classy instead of sexy, just plain good-looking instead of smoking hot. Peter couldn’t help but smile a little bit with the irony.

“Hey, Angel,” Peter said.

Angelica reached out and plucked the cigarette from his lips, frowning. She held it up at him between a thumb and forefinger.

“Are you out of your mind, Peter?”

Peter closed his eyes and shook his head. “Don’t you start, too. It’s been a rough day.”

Angelica grabbed him by jaw, forcing him to look at her. “You are better than this shit. Bullets, alien symbiotes, and irritating Canadians with really sharp claws might not be able to kill you, but this shit will put you in your grave quick.”

She held his eyes forcefully for a long moment, until Peter nodded. She sighed and stepped back, then took a draw off the cigarette before tossing it into the street. Peter frowned as she breathed the smoke out.

“What are you doing here?” Peter asked, fighting the urge to go for his pack.

“Bobby called about an hour ago,” Angelica said. “Train took forever.”

“Why not...” Peter put his hands up, mimicking flying.

Angelica shrugged. “Sometimes it’s nice to just walk.”

Peter glanced back into the bar. Bobby and Luke were chatting, and Peter could see a stance in Bobby that he’d seen many times before. This was, however, the first time he’d ever seen Iceman’s flirt stance directed at a man.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, taking her arm. “I don’t think either of us are going to want to be here in a few minutes.”

Angelica looked at the bar, moving with him as he started down the street. “But Bobby—“

“Is hitting on Power Man.”

Angelica started pulling against him. “No, I am not missing this!”

Peter laughed and tugged her along after him. “Come on, Red. Give the man some space.”

Angelica pouted as she fell into step by him. “Why are all the cute ones gay?”

“Just to piss you off,” Peter said before whistling for a cab, “A couple of months ago, we all got together and decided.”

“We all?” She asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

“Yeah, you know. Guys. All of us, from across the globe,” Peter said. “While we appreciate all you have done for being awesome and gorgeous, we couldn’t let it slide that you nearly married Vance Astrovik. So we decided all the cute ones would be gay, just to spite you. It was close. I just made the fugly cut off.”

Angel laughed as a cab glided to a stop in front of them. Peter stepped to the back door, dramatically flourishing a bow before opening it up.

“Fugly, huh?” she asked, getting inside the cab. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said. “Somewhere we can talk and exchange meaningful, soul-filled glances? I just don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Where to?” The cabbie asked.

“Somewhere that he won’t be alone,” Angel said. “I think Cheers is in Boston, though.”

The cabbie looked back at them. “Boston?”

Peter shook his head and rattled off his address, then glanced at Angelica. “I know this place overlooking the river. You’ll love it. I want to change first, though.”

Angelica nodded and wrinkled her nose. “I can smell the spandex.”

Peter sighed and fell back into the seat as the cab started forward. “Yeah. It was… it was.”

Angelica took his arm and placed it in her lap, twining her fingers around his before gently squeezing his hand.

“I know, Pete.”

He looked to her, her face half concealed by shadows and the other lit by the lights of the Kitchen as they glided through the streets. A lock of red hair fell off her shoulder, fallen free from the beret and he reached out, touching it. It felt strange in his hand, slipping it between his thumb and finger, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong. Angelica watched him silently while he played with her hair, then pushed the strand back over her shoulder and moved in, laying her head on his shoulder. Peter slipped his arm around and held on.

He was cradling her, but somehow, she was giving him comfort. And he knew that she knew it. He closed his eyes, the scent of Echinacea filling his senses and felt tears drift down his cheeks.

“It’s okay, Pete,” she said softly, uncoiling her fingers and laying her hand on his chest. “I’m here for you.”

***

**Thursday – June 25 th, 2015 — 12:34 PM**

Peter jiggled the key in the lock, but no matter what he did, it refused to budge. Angelica stood behind him, looking up and down the hallway of his apartment building. Pete smiled to her uneasily, trying again. That’s when he saw the pink slip underneath his door. He crouched and picked it up, unfolding a carbon copy of an eviction notice.

“No,” Peter said, holding it in both hands. “No, no, this is not happening…”

“What is it?” Angelica asked, looking back to him. Peter crumbled the paper and laid his forehead against the door, holding the notice in his clenched fist.

Angelica put her hand on his shoulder. “Pete?”

“Nothing,” he said, banging his head on the door twice before opening his eyes again. “Just one more thing.”

“Is that a—“

Peter dropped the eviction notice and slapped his hand against the door, right where the lock would be. Wood cracked and splintered and the door swung open.

“I just need to get a couple of things,” he said, and stepped into his apartment. Angelica followed him in, and immediately her hand went to her nose. Her eyes were slightly wide as she surveyed the mess that was Peter Parker’s home.

“I’ll… I’ll wait outside. Take your time, hun,” she said, stepping back into the hall again with as much grace as she could manage.

Peter sighed and shook his head, looking around. It had been a while since he’d last cleaned. Grabbing a backpack, he began picking through his single room palace, shoving a few clothes and his extra costume inside before going for the little things. A razor, some shaving cream, the birthday card May had given him last year, his aunt’s locket. Once they were all packed away, he went to a set of metal racks that served at his bookcase and fell to his knees.

He had long since pawned his camera and equipment. The only thing that remained of Peter Parker, professional photographer, were his portfolios. He had twelve of them, the best shots of his work throughout time, his personal favorites that captured friends, family, and loved ones. They were, simply put, his most treasured possessions.

“I’ll get you all back,” he promised, selecting the first one and slipping it into his backpack. “I promise I will.”

He began back to the hall, and he could hear Angelica’s voice. He slowed and stopped by the door, listening.

“He doesn’t even have a bed, Bobby. Just a couch with sheets.” There was a pause, and he could hear Angelica pacing. She was keeping her voice down, but his hearing was so sensitive that he could easily catch even her slightest breath. “No, I haven’t told him yet. Between Marko and all this… yeah, I know. I know.”

Hadn’t told him? Peter thought back to when she’d first returned to the city, a couple of weeks before. It had seemed like she was about to say something, and then changed her mind. He hadn’t thought much about it since.

“No, I’m going to take him home. I’m not letting fucking Spider-Man go to a shelter. Not to mention they are sure to be full up by now.”

Peter sighed and shook his head, taking a couple of soft steps back before noisily approaching the door.

“He’s coming, Bobby. I’ll call you later.”

When he made it out to the hall, Angelica had both hands in her pockets, smiling at him. He pulled the door shut against the frame, nodding to her.

“You ready?”

“Actually,” she said, “I am getting kind of tired. Think you can find it in your heart to see a girl home?”

Peter smiled, trying not to let the bitterness show in face. “You know, you’re right. I should turn in myself.”

“I have left-over lasagna at my place,” Angelica said. Peter’s stomach growled at the thought of decent food. “Too much for me to eat, you know how my aunt is.”

“No,” Peter said, shaking his head. “I should go on patrol, you know. Make sure the city isn’t—“

“God damn it, Peter, just fucking take me home,” Angelica said, her patience cracking. “Please?”

Peter blinked in surprise at her. Angelica was always so mild-mannered, so calm. She never got frustrated, never got short with people. But right now he could see a storm brewing in her eyes, in the way she shifted from foot to foot. Peter took a deep breath and swallowed his pride.

“Sure, Angel.” He said. “Whatever you want.”

In silence, Spider-Man and Firestar bordered the closest train, riding through the city in silence and crossing the river into Queens. They sat apart from each other in their human identities, the ease and comfort completely sucked out of the evening. By the time they reached Angelica’s stop, Peter found himself wishing for another drink.

They walked quietly down the streets, passed the corner shops and grocers to neighborhoods beyond. Even though it was warm out, Peter hugged his arms, feeling cold and lost again. For standing next to him, Angelica might as well be a thousand miles away.

They stepped up to one of townhouses, Angelica pulling out her keys and unlocking the door. Her home, a nice little two-floor affair just like thousands of others in Queens, was nice and homey, filled with years of well-worn and cared for trinkets. Along the walls pictures hung of her family, of the various X-Men and New Warriors she’d teamed with over the years. Peter walked down the line of photos, smiling at faces he hadn’t seen in years, of some of the heroes that had fallen long ago. Angelica stood behind him as he stopped at a picture of the three of them from nearly twenty years before.

“Harry took this,” Peter said, putting his hand on the frame. Bobby and Angel stood just behind him, crouching with his arms wide. Angel had her hand on his shoulder. In the background, Peter could see the lines of his Aunt May’s house.

“We were on our way out to Coney Island,” Angelica said. “It was the first time we could get you to go out since Gwen.”

Peter nodded and smiled. “I remember. I won you that huge pink bear at the hammer thing.”

Angelica giggled. “The look on that carney’s face when you broke the bell. So much for being a wallflower.”

“What does that even mean, anyway?” He could still hear the guy’s voice. _Hey Red, when your wallflower boyfriend is done dropping the hammer, think you can ring it?_ Peter shook his head.

“I had such a crush on you,” he said.

“What?” If he had turned around and suddenly turned into the Silver Surfer, he doubted that Angelica would have been more surprised. “You had a crush… on me?”

Peter nodded and turned to face her. She was staring at him as if he had just hit her.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “In fact, I am pretty sure that it is you that got me hooked on a lifelong addiction to red-heads.”

She tilted her head, staring at him.

“You never said anything,” she said. “You never even hinted at it. You were so wrapped up in Gwen that… Jesus, Peter.”

Peter shrugged. “I had all the confidence of a slug surrounded by salt back then. Yeah, I was sad about Gwen, but… you know, I thought you were into Bobby, regardless.”

Angelica shook her head. “No. Everyone always assumes that. But I’ve always known about him.”

“How?” Peter asked, surprised. “He didn’t even know himself, from what I understand. If he did, then Kitty has damn good reason to be really pissed at him.”

“She does. But not for that. Bobby just didn’t want to face it, didn’t want to accept what he wanted,” she looked him in the eye again. “Didn’t know how to say everything he felt to the people he wanted to say it to the most.”

They stared at each other in silence for a long moment. Peter couldn’t look away from her eyes; at how much she was saying wordlessly with them. He wondered what his were saying back to her. He reached out and touched her cheek, a simple brush that brought a rush of sensation through his fingers. She pressed her skin against his touch, tilting her head into it. Peter leaned in slowly, and ready to pull back at any moment. Angelica watched him lean in and closed her eyes.

As their lips brushed, he heard her whisper.

“Stop. I can’t. Not yet.”

Peter leaned his forehead against hers, his eyes still closed. They rested against each other for a moment.

“You want to,” he said. It wasn’t a question and they both knew it.

“I’ve always wanted to,” she said. “But, I need to talk to you first.”

“So talk.”

Angelica shook her head, pulling back. “Not now. Go upstairs, get a shower. If you look in the hall closet, you can find a box of my dad’s old clothes. Throw what your wearing down the hall and leave your backpack here so I wash whatever you tossed into it. I’ll heat that lasagna up for us, and we can talk.”

“Are you sure?” Peter asked.

Angelica nodded. “Yeah. It’s time you know the truth.”

With that she turned, leaving the scent of Echinacea in the air behind her. Peter closed his eyes and slid his backpack to the ground, the feeling of dread descending over him once more.


	7. The Heat of the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angelica brings Peter home and lets him in on the secret that killing her. They grow closer, and an old passion is finally given its due.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The sex is finally here. Not too graphic - some future scenes will be more so.  
> \- Trigger Warning: Disease, Treatment, and Consequence

**Chapter Seven**

**Thursday – June 26 th, 2015 – 2:23 AM**

Peter had forgotten what it was like to take a shower in a private bathroom.

The sides of the tub were loaded with a woman’s bathroom stuff, something he hadn’t even realized he had missed from his years living with MJ. Bath salts, creams, lotions, body wash, bubble bath… just about everything he could think of to find, though oddly enough, he had to go searching for shampoo. He shaved while he was in the shower, fairly certain Angelica wouldn’t mind the loss of one of the little pink razors he found still in a package under the sink, then let the heat pour over him full blast until every muscle felt like it might slide off his body.

He wiped away the mist from the mirror and looked at himself, at the gray in his hair and the hollowness of his cheeks. As a kid, Pete had always been skinny, so skinny that his Aunt May had even put him on protein supplements to help fill him out. None of it had ever taken, though, not until he had been bit by the spider. After that, he had filled out dramatically, putting on the muscle that gave him Spider-Man’s rather well known physique. But with the years of a shit diet, he had lost a lot of the fatty mass that mixed with the muscle, and now had a gaunt look that was freakish in its own way.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and went looking for Angelica’s father clothes, and then laughed while holding up a pair of his sweatpants. Tucking them under his arm, he slipped downstairs, following the smell of something delicious into the kitchen.

“Hey Angel,” pushing the swinging door open and stepping in, holding the pants out at arms-length. “I think we have a problem.”

Angelica turned from where she had just taken a casserole out of the stove and went stock still, staring at him. Peter grinned, holding the enormous pair of pants in front of him.

“Your dad put on some weight, didn’t he?” He said, glancing over to her.

Angelica blinked a few times and then shook her head, turning around again while her cheeks started to turn red.

“Yeah, yeah. I guess he did. I didn’t even think of that.”

Peter tilted his head toward her, tossing the pants on a chair by the fridge.

“Something wrong?”

“No, no!” Angelica said, pulling a sheet of aluminum foil off the steaming casserole without bothering to use over mitts. She motioned through another swinging door. “Go sit down. You want a beer?”

“Sure,” Pete said, making his way thought the door and into a dining room. Four comfortable and worn chairs rested around a dark wood dinner table. Peter pulled out a chair and sat. rubbing his bare arms. Angelica came through the door a moment later, a plate in each hand and two bottles of beer tucked in her elbows. She placed plate in front of him, loaded with an enormous portion of lasagna, a bit of green salad and a slice of garlic bread. Peter leaned in and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and smiling.

“It’s official,” he said. “I love your aunt.”

Angelica laughed and sat down. Peter lifted his fork, dedicated to the ideal of eating in a polite and respectful manner, but after the first bite it was all he could do not to shove the entire plate down his throat and just be done with it. He hurried through the meal, only slowing down to open his beer. It might well have been the best thing he’d ever eaten. When he was done, he lied back in the chair, full to the point of bursting.

Angelica smiled at him from her seat. She had managed to eat about a quarter of her bread and some of her salad, but the lasagna looked completely untouched.

“Stick a fork in me,” Peter said. “I’m done.”

They sat in silence for a bit, Peter listening while Angelica’s fork occasionally scraped the plate. From below the floor boards, he could hear a buzzer sound. Over her protests, Peter hopped up and went downstairs, finding the dryer in the basement. A moment later he was upstairs, wearing a comfortable and clean-smelling pair of sweatpants and a tank-top, still warm from the machine. He found Angelica in the kitchen, washing their plates with a sad smile on her face.

Peter retrieved his beer and leaned back against the island in the kitchen.

“Penny for your thoughts, Red?”

Angelica glanced at him over her shoulder, then looked back to the sink.

“You really are hung up on my hair.”

“The problem with drinking is admitting stuff you normally wouldn’t,” Peter said. “Like the entire crush and red-head thing.”

He could see her smile in the reflection of the window above the sink, her eyes still focused on the dishes.

“It’s not only that, though,” Peter said. “It’s the smell.”

Her eyes flicked up at his reflection. “I smell?”

Peter shook his head while taking a pull of his beer, holding a hand up and waving it dismissively.

“No, no, not in a bad way. Just the shampoo you use. You still use it. That’s your smell.”

“Echinacea,” Angelica said, nodding and looking back down.

“Yeah,” Peter said. “Mary Jane tried using it once.”

“Oh?”

Peter nodded, and thought back to it. It had been about a year after May was born, when they had begun the slump that led to divorce. That night, however, the sex had been amazing.

“I had to ask her to stop using it,” he said. “It made me think of you too much, and you were missing in action at the time.”

She turned off the water and looked up at him again, their eyes locking in the reflection of the mirror.

“It was weird,” he said. “Being with her, and smelling you.”

“We look alike. I mean, she’s more,” Angelica said, then motioned at her hips and waist, pressing inward. “I’ve got Irish hips.”

“That’s not all you’ve got on her,” Peter said.

Angelica rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I have got so much on Mary Jane Watson, actress-slash-model.”

“You have no idea how much Photoshop goes in to her look,” Peter said. “Trust me, I’ve seen this ‘Mary Jane Actress-slash-Model’ before, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually met her. Now, Mary Jane Watson, Ben & Jerry’s Addict? Her I know.”

Angelica laughed in spite of herself and shook her head. “You’re terrible.”

“It’s true, though,” Peter said. “Believe me when I say she is a mess. She is nothing without her make-up team. Trust me, Angel. Hair and body? You’ve got her beat by a mile. And you have the fact that you’re not a psychopathic spider-hating bitch on your side, also.”

Angelica reached up touched a strand of her hair, hanging off her shoulder. Peter looked down long enough to finish his beer and then toss the bottle in a green recycling bin. When he looked back up to the mirror, he could see her eyes closed, and tears streaming down her cheeks.

The quiet crying.

“Angel?” He approached slowl, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder. “What is it? What did I say?”

She twitched softly in silent sobs, then opened her eyes and found his in the mirror.

“It’s a wig, Peter,” she said, so soft that even his hearing had trouble picking it out.

“What do you mean?”

She jerked her shoulder away and reached up, hands at her hair. A moment later, Angelica pulled it all from her head, spinning on him. She wore a wig cap over a slight stain of red over her scalp. Anger raged in her eyes, mixed with fear and shame. She threw the wig at him, hitting him square in the chest. He caught in shocked surprise, taking a step back.

“It’s a mother-fucking wig, Peter!” she screamed. “It’s been a wig for two god damn years. It started falling out in little strands, and then in a handful, and before I knew it I was as bald as the Silver-Fucking-Surfer. And it isn’t just the head on my hair. Arm hair. Pubic hair. Armpit hair. My fucking eyelashes fell out, Peter. Do you know what it is like to live without fucking eyelashes? Or eyebrows? All of it, gone. Not a single fucking strand of hair left anywhere on my body.”

Peter fumbled to make words, but she cut him off, slamming her fist into his chest over the wig.

“So I am sorry if your little fucking crush on my god damn, mother-fucking hair is what’s causing you all this pain. I am sorry that your life with MJ was ruined because she tried my fucking shampoo, or that you can’t get over who I was when I was six-fucking-teen.” She was screaming and crying, hitting him with almost every word. “I’m sorry, Peter. I am so fucking sorry. I’m sorry!”

Peter wrapped his arms around her, holding her while she collapsed against him in tears. Through the wig cap, he could smell her again, stronger than before. He held her close while she cried, giant racking sobs that poured through her whole body, through him. He held her tightly until the sobs subsided, and she wept gently against him.

“Most mutants are immune to their own powers,” she said softly. “Vance and I found out that I wasn’t the hard way.”

“What do you mean?” he rubbed her shoulder gently. He wanted to reach up and pull the wig cap off, to run his fingers through what little hair she had, but was pretty sure that would just make things worse. He still held the wig in one hand, pressed against the small of her back.

“The microwaves I emit, “she said, taking a deep breath. Shame and heartbreak poured through every word, every motion she made. “My body is not completely immune to them. It made me sterile.”

“Oh, Jesus, Angel,” Peter whispered against her forehead. “Is that why?”

Angelica nodded. “We said it didn’t matter, at first. But it did. It mattered to him a whole hell of a lot. But that’s fine, he’ll be okay. I hear him and Namorita are…”

She shook her head into his chest.

“What kind is it?” Peter asked, the light in his head finally going off as everything fell into place.

“It’s called a gliomatosis cerebri,” she whispered. “It’s in a part of the brain where operating just isn’t an option, and radiation therapy barely helps. They diagnosed me a little over two years ago.”

Peter closed his eyes, cradling the back of her head with his hand, squeezing softly.

“I had no idea,” he said.

“I tried to tell you,” she said. “I wanted to tell you. I didn’t come home because of Emma or anything with the school.”

“You came home to die,” Peter said.

Angelica nodded. “I couldn’t take the treatments anymore, and they just weren’t doing anything. I was constantly sick, down to less than a hundred pounds. Every day, bit by bit, I was just disappearing. The students at the school were noticing, and all the X-Men were treating me with kiddie gloves. I’d had enough. So I quit my therapy, finished out the semester, and came back.”

Peter thought about appreciating her body when she landed on the Empire State Building. He opened his mouth before he could think better of it.

“I hate to tell you this Angel,” he said softly. “But you are well over a hundred pounds.”

Angelica stiffened in his arms for a second, sucking back a sob she had just started to release. Peter squeezed his eyes shut and silently cursed himself, until she started shuddering against him. A moment later, the sound of her chuckling caused him to open his eyes.

“You really are terrible,” she said, then laughed harder.

Peter grinned and nodded. “Yeah, I’m a dick. But this is nothing new.”

Angelica leaned back and wiped her eyes. “I started putting on weight again after I ended my therapy. Most of my hair started to grow back as well.”

“Is there anything that can be—“

She lifted her fingers to his lips, shaking her head. “Trust me, I’ve tried. Everyone in the world we know, and no one has been able to cure it. The problem is that I am the cause. Somehow that messes up what even the most powerful healers, scientific or otherwise, can do. I was going to try consulting with Franklin Richards, but, well. You know.”

Peter nodded. He reached up to her forehead with his fingers, brushing them across the band of the wig cap and arching and eyebrow. She bit her lip, eyes locked on his, before nodding. A second later he had the thing off. Her hair, once luxurious, was now only a couple of inches long, a bit thinner than he imagined and maybe a shade off its once dark luster. He ran his fingers through it and Angelica closed her eyes, her head gently following the motions of his hand. Through the cloth of his tank top, he could feel her nails rake against his chest as she closed her hand.

“Vance is a fucking moron,” Peter said. Angelica opened her eyes, a little confused, then smiled and nodded.

“So is Mary Jane.”

“I hope you don’t plan on getting an argument from me,” Peter said, leaning in to her again.

“Don’t,” she whispered as he came close. “Don’t do this Peter. I don’t want you to go through this.”

“Too late, Angel,” he said, looking into her eyes, his lips brushing across hers. “I’m in. I’m in deep.”

When he pressed his lips against hers, heat exploded around him, unbearable and consuming heat that instantly robbed him of his strength. He grabbed the edge of the island behind him with one hand, knees buckling.

“Sorry!” Angelica said, and the warmth quickly receded. Sweat poured down his body, breaking free in a torrent, soaking through his tank top instantly. They looked at each other and then both started laughing, before Peter scooped her up and spun her around, setting her on top of the kitchen island and pressing his lips against hers again. She moaned into his mouth, sucking at his lips hungrily, both of her hands coming up to cradle the back of his head and pull him in closer. With the wig still in hand, Peter wrapped his arms around her waist, and she surprised him by parting her legs and wrapping them around him.

He pulled back from the kiss for a moment, grinning. “Damn, Angelica, are you—“

“Don’t ruin it, Pete,” she said, grabbing at his tank top and tearing it off of him. “It’s been a hell of a long time for me, and I am something of an addict.”

Peter’s spine went straight as she scratched her nails across his chest and over his arms, nails raking up his triceps as she ran her palms against his biceps. Her hips ground into him, seeking the hardness of his erection, pressing herself against him. It was shocking; Angelica Jones, who came off as prim as to the point of prudishness, was dry humping him in her kitchen.

With his free hand, he reached behind her and pulled at her shirt, almost ripping it over her head and fighting with her until her arms spilled free. He laid her back on the counter, running his hands across her tummy, reaching up to grab her breasts through the thin fabric of her cotton bra. He felt for her nipples, rubbing them with her thumb, confused at the wash of red hair over one of them.

Angelica looked up as well, and shook her head. “Would you please put that thing down?”

Peter quickly tucked the wig into the band of his sweat pants, then looked her in the eye again. They both started to giggle and Peter buried his face in his hands.

“We are so fucking this up,” he said. Angelica’s peal of laughter indicated her agreement.

After the laughter died down, he looked down to her, resting his hands above curve of her hips, his thumb on the slight rounding of her belly. She looked so strange, her hair so short, but the perfect heart-shape of her face and gentle green of her eyes pulled him. This was Angelica, his Angelica, the one he had fantasized about so much as a kid. One of the few people in the world that had always been there for him, even if they had lost touch for so long.

“Do you…” Angelica began, but her voice began to shake and she shook her head. He could sense the vulnerability in her, both in her voice and in the way she closed her eyes. “Of course you don’t.”

Peter scooped her up in his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck as she went vertical, and Peter whispered softly into her ear.

“Angel, I have wanted to fuck you for almost twenty years. If you think I am passing that up, then you aren’t half as smart as all your degrees claim you are.”

It was the word ‘fuck’ that caused her back to arch, the vulgarity exciting her. He let go of her for a second to scratch his back where the wig was itching him, then walked to the back stairs in the kitchen and began up to the second floor. At the top, he oriented on where he remembered the master bedroom to be. She nibbled on his neck as he carried her, purring into his ear in a way only one other person had ever been able to match, and it was just as exciting coming from her as it had been coming from Felicia Hardy.

“That’s my dad’s room,” she said, and he veered sharply to the left. He pressed her against the wall of the other door, kissing her passionately while fumbling with the handle. Unable to get a proper grip he twisted just as Angelica dug her nails into his spine. He thrust forward with his hips in reflex, pressing her into the door until she squeaked.

“What?” He asked, gasping for breath.

“Door handle!” she said, letting go of him and rubbing her butt before opening the door.

He growled and tossed her off him, flinging her through the air before releasing three sprays of webbing, catching her in place above the bed. Angelica squealed and then laughed as Peter fought to pull his sweatpants off, hopping under her on the bed and pulling them free. Facing the bed, he watched as Angelica ran her eyes along him, then Peter reached up and parted the webbing, letting her fall on top of him.

She was on him in an instant, grabbing his hands and pressing them back against the bed, her mouth devouring his and grinding into him with her hips. Free, his cock pressed into her, and he could the warmth and the comforting wetness in the thin fabric of her pants. She leaned back and reached behind, unclasping her bra and tossing it to the side. Peter stared up at her, her body illuminated by the light of the window, in absolute awe of the woman above him.

“No,” she said, and shook her head. “Close your eyes.”

“What?” he asked, bringing his hands down to work at the button of her pants. She slid his hands away.

“I don’t want you to remember me like this. Just close your eyes, Peter.”

Peter sighed and closed his eyes, pulling his hands back again. He felt her get off the bed and move around for a moment. She crawled back on top of him, her legs bare against his. He felt her take him in her hand and then settle above him, sliding herself on to him. Peter sucked in a deep breath as he entered, his hands coming out to grip her thighs. She leaned forward and pushed, and he fought against how tight she was until he was buried as deep as he could be. She moaned in pleasure above him, hair falling across his chest.

Peter opened his eyes again to see her wig back in place. His Angelica was complete again. Peter closed his eyes and lost himself in the ecstasy of their embrace.


	8. Electric Booglaloo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Angelica celebrate their new-found relationship with an awkward Morning After. Later on, Spider-Man and Iceman battle Electro at a Starktech facility.

**Chapter Eight:**

**Thursday – June 26 th, 2015 – 10:25 AM**

Peter had absolutely forgotten what a bed could feel like.

It wasn’t just that Angelica had a bed, it was the bed that she had. He didn’t lie on it so much as sink into it, and then there were the pillows and comforters, all floating around him while he floated on the whatever form of pure divinity it was that she called a mattress. She must have bought in Valhalla; only the God of Mischief could have created something so thoroughly distracting.

The best part, though, was waking up surrounded by her scent. Not from what they did last night, though that was awesome, too. She had slept in this bed for some time, surrounded by this sheet and these pillows, and each was infused with her presence. She wasn’t in the bed; he was aware of that. But lying there, floating in her scent, it was almost like she was surrounding him.

He fought to stay in that bed as long as he could, but eventually biology won out. He pulled himself from his little slice of perfection, raising a finger in what he assumed was the general direction of Aasgard so he could flip Loki off. Having to cross that cold floor after such warmth, he finally knew what the green asshole’s evil game was. He relieved himself and then fished around for his clothes, finding his backpack and what few he had brought neatly folded on a vanity facing the window.

“Good morning,” Angelica said as he came down. She sat on a stool at the kitchen island, a laptop in front of her, dressed in a thick yellow robe. She had a spoon in her mouth and was stirring a steaming cup of coffee with one finger, short hair still wet from the shower.

Peter grinned and crossed the room, taking the spoon from her mouth and kissing her gently. Her smile was brilliant as he pulled away and replaced the spoon.

“Where do I find more of that?” Peter asked, pointing at her cup. The kitchen smelled wonderful, heavy with the scent of some flavored coffee. Angelica pointed over to the counter and Peter searched around, finding an empty cup and pouring it up.

“Black, huh?” Angelica snorted and shook her head. “That I would not have guessed in a million years.”

Peter grinned. “Hey, I had my goth phase. Black like the depths of my eternal soul.”

Angel rolled her eyes. “I remember your goth phase. It lasted, what, two weeks until you got webs caught in your fishnets?”

Peter stuck his tongue out at her. “I just got used to it black. Can’t afford sugar or milk half the time, and I just sort of got used to it.”

“I have sugar,” Angelica said, sweeping her hand back at the counter. “Powder creamer and milk and everything. No need to be all Leonidas just to impress me”

Peter shook his head. “I can’t drink it that way anymore. I know, it’s fucked up. But if it isn’t bitter as shit, it isn’t coffee.”

“Alright, badass,” Angel said, sticking her spoon back in a jar of peanut butter before licking it clean. “But don’t say I didn’t offer.”

“Anything exciting happening on the Interwebs?” he asked before taking a sip of his coffee. “Holy shit, this is good.”

She twirled her hand in the air, “I ain’t got time for bad coffee. And nothing new. I mean, it talks about what happened on the bridge. The Bugle is calling you out for causing more than sixty million in property damages.”

“The Bugle?” Peter asked, stepping behind her and looking over his shoulder. Sure enough, the webpage showed the Daily Bugle Online, with a picture of JJJ in the upper right corner. “When did they go online?”

Angelica looked over her shoulder at him. “Years ago? Damn, Peter, play some catch-up. You realize this is, like, the twenty-first century, right?”

He reached forward and pinched her rear through the robe, causing her to squeak and jump. “Be nice.”

Angelica shook her head a little, hugging herself. He glanced down to her, to the way her shoulders were set, all defensive.

“What did I do?”

Angelica shook her head. “It’s nothing, it’s just…”

“What?”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Are we getting a little too comfortable too fast?

“What do you mean?” He took another stool from the counter, parking it next to hers and sitting on it.

She took a deep breath, clearly considering her words. “Look, I know what happened last night was important and exciting and…”

Peter tilted his head. “Are you giving me the get out routine? Should I be doing the walk of shame down your lawn with my shoes in my hand?”

Angelica’s eyes went wide. “No, no! No, that’s not what I mean. This wasn’t some one-night stand. At least, I don’t want it to be. Why, do you?”

“No, I am way to obsessive to go for one night stands,” Peter said. “If anything, you’re going to need to get a restraining order. Seriously, I’m a menace. Even the Bugle says so.”

“Not really comforting, Peter…”

Peter rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. Yes, I want to chase this thing called happiness down and wring its neck so I can feast on its sweet nectar.”

Angelica tilted her head. “You have no idea how to talk to women the next morning, do you? You’re either cracking jokes or trying to sound like Victor Von Doom.”

“Doom squeezes bunnies? That bastard. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, though.”

A frustrated sigh. He’d heard something like it several times from MJ, usually followed by something about commitment issues. Either that or accusations involving the toilet seat.

Peter waited for the anger to surface, but instead, all he heard was Angelica’s eternally patient voice.

“Peter, I get that your torn up and not good at this relationship thing,” she said. “Neither am I. It weirded me out that you were so handsy when you came in, but pulling back and hiding behind jokes isn’t going to help anything.”

“I was handsy?” Peter asked, retracing his steps in his mind.

“Just… you…” She sighed and shook her head. “You pinched my ass, Pete.”

Peter grinned. “It’s a nice ass.”

She laughed, suddenly. “I’m just not used to being pawed at again.”

“I can try to stop.”

Angelica shook her head. “No, I don’t want you to stop. If you weren’t doing it, that would be even worse. I just… I don’t know. It was weird that it was happening again. Vance was never handsy. He would rarely touch anything, much less me, directly. You know how telekinetics are.”

“Germophobes.” Peter said, surprised when Angelica nodded.

“Exactly.”

 “This is the most fucked up post-coitus conversation I have ever had,” Peter said. “Congratulations, Miss Jones. In about ten minutes you’ve wiped away thirty years of experience.”

Angelica smirked at him. “I knew you at seventeen.”

“Fine, twenty years.” Peter said, and then sighed. “Fifteen years.”

“Better,” she said, before reaching into the pocket of her robe and pulling her phone out. Peter sipped his coffee while she flipped through whatever messages had popped up. “So, you want to go public with this?”

Peter shrugged. “We’re both heroes. Not like we need to protect each other.”

Angelica nodded. “Good, because Bobby already figured it out and told Kitty.”

“Really?” Peter asked, arching an eyebrow. If Kitty knew, half the heroes on the east coast new by now as well. “How did Bobby find out?”

Angelica blushed a little.

“Ahh.” Peter said and grinned. “And?”

Angelica smiled at him. “He wanted details. Exact details.”

“What, like location and music selection?”

“More like length and girth.”

Peter nearly spit out his coffee, causing Angelica to snort before giggling. He put his cup down and picked her up off the stool, grinning as she wrapped her arms and legs around him.

“What am I going to do with you?” He asked.

She grinned as he started opening up her robe. “I’ve got a book or two that should give you some ideas. How flexible are you?”

 

***

**Thursday – June 26 th, 2015 – 4: 45 PM**

Spider-Man kicked Electro hard in the chest, lifting him off the ground and smashing through the window of the facility, sending him flying into the New York sky.

Electro screamed as he fell, dropping both of the hard-plastic boxes marked “Stark Industries” that he carried. Spider-Man followed him out the window, hitting the opposite building with a web-line and swinging wide, watching as the green-and-yellow clad villain fell to his doom. Before he could fall more than a few feet, though, a sparkling length of pure ice appeared under him. The Iceman slid past, forming the ramp and leading it to the ground as Electro slammed into it with a loud thud. Spidey leapt into the air and shot two quick web-lines, snagging the boxes and pulling them in. He wrapped them in webbing as he fell, then hung them from a light pole as it passed, flipping forward and landing on the pavement in a three-point crouch.

“Tony’s going to sue you for that,” Iceman said, calmly walking toward him. Behind his ice-armored friend, Electro continued down the ramp, screaming until it sent him directly into the side of the building. “I’m pretty sure he has that landing trademarked.”

Spider-Man stood and brushed himself off. “I like it. It’s dramatic, and if you do it just right, it lets the wedgie slip out.”

“That’s why I go with ice. Nothing gets stuck in your butt.”

Electro began to pick himself up from the pavement. Dozens of people watched from a safe distance, phones and tablets recording every second.

“And I thought that would be a plus for you,” Peter said and leapt over Bobby to land by Electro. “Max, Max, Max… seriously man, you need to update your look.”

Electro took a step back, still dazed. His fists began to spark with power, electricity arcing across his yellow gloves.

“Have you ever thought of a black suit and blue electricity?” Spidey asked, springing up as Electro released the energy. Peter flipped back and clung to the side of the building. “That way you could be black and blue without getting beat up first. Like some intense, dark electric nightmare, not a reject from the pride parade.”

“What is with you and the homophobia?” Iceman asked, sending a swarm of snowballs into the back of Electro’s knees. He fell back, extending arms shooting built up electricity harmlessly into the sky.

“It’s nothing personal. I am just severely insecure in my own sexuality.” Peter sprung from the building, landing by Electro and grabbing one of the villain’s boots with both hands. “Slip and slide?”

“Slip and slide!” Iceman answered. Peter drug Electro into the air by the leg, spinning him twice while Bobby coated the ground between them in a sheet of ice. When it was complete, Peter launched Electro at Bobby. Iceman caught him and put him on his feet before sending him sliding down the sheet of ice. Electro screamed as he slid, fighting to keep his balance. “So, you and Firestar, huh?”

Peter sprung into a wheel kick, connecting with Electro’s jaw and sending him shooting back toward Iceman on the path of frozen ground. “Yessir! Finally bagged me a hot one.”

Electro’s scream was cut off as Bobby slugged him, reversing the villain’s momentum and sending him back at Spidey again. “I always thought you two would make a good couple.”

Peter flipped to the side and did a standing cartwheel, catching the villain with both feet before righting himself. Max wavered, trying to keep his balance, but obviously fighting to stay conscious as well as he went sliding back to Iceman. “You could have told me twenty years ago.”

Bobby formed a comically oversized hammer out of Ice as Electro came close. “And ruin the surprise?”

After a loud thud, Electro slid back to Spidey face first, completely out. Peter caught him with his boot, halting his progress and posing so the spectators could get a few good shots.

“You could have saved me from what’s-her-name.” Peter said.

“Yeah, but you got you-know-who because of what’s-her-name,” Bobby said as he stepped close, shooting a peace symbol at the people watching. Cars parted on the avenue so that the SHIELD containment crew could get through.

“Yeah, that’s true. You approve, I take it?”

“You know I do. You two are cute together.” Iceman crouched by the unconscious Electro and knocked gently on his head. “I don’t think we’re getting anything out of… out of…”

“Max,” Spiderman said. He watched as an officious looking man with a Stark badge peered up at the package Spidey had left swinging from the light pole. “Max Dillion, the incredibly overpowered and hideously flamboyant Electro. Give me a sec, Frosty.”

Peter left Bobby to deal with SHIELD and walked over to the Stark employee.

“That stuff yours?”

The man turned and put out his hand. “Jake Constance, head of the production floor, Mr. Spider-Man.”

Spidey shook his hand before snagging the pouch with a web-line and pulling it down. He pulled the webs apart and handed the boxes over. “What are these?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Constance said, tucking the boxes under his arm. “I’ll find out when I get them inside.”

Peter nodded and saluted the man as he walked off, turning back to where Bobby helped the team lift Electro into a pod-shaped containment unit. When he was done, only Electro’s star-shaped mask extended from the top of the pod.

“You’re right,” Bobby said as Peter came close. “That is extremely gay.”

“Right?”

“So, what was he here after?” Iceman asked, then flicked his eyes beyond Spider-Man.

“No clue,” Peter asked, turning to follow Bobby’s glance. Mr. Constance approached, pushing through the crowd of people.

“Spider-Man,” the man said, extending his hand as he came close. “Jake Constance, I’m the facility administrator here.”

Spidey turned and looked to Iceman, then back to man.

“Uh, yeah? I know?”

Constance slowly pulled his hand back. “Stark Industries would like to thank you for stopping Electro. And, I hate to sound ungrateful, but did you by any chance recover the processors?”

Peter pointed to where he had just given Constance the boxes while Iceman said “Processors?”

“This facility is a production point for Mr. Stark’s more advanced processors,” Constance said, motioning at the building behind him. “Electro somehow managed to get past an enormous amount of security and into Mr. Stark’s most secure vaults, where models still in the testing phase are kept.”

“Uhm, that’s nice and all chuckles,” Spider-Man said, “but I just gave you back the loot.”

Constance stared at him for a moment. “No, sir, you didn’t.”

Spider-Man looked to Iceman, who shook his head. Peter turned back to Constance. “You just came out of the crowd, and I grabbed them off that light-pole there.”

“No, sir,” the man objected, and then pointed to where a uniformed police officer was taking statements from the employees. “As soon as I was done with him, I came right over to you. We can pull the footage from the cameras, if you like. I swear, sir.”

Peter looked to the cop, then to Constance, and then to Iceman.

“Well… shit.”


	9. Cat Scratch Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Firestar learns that Black Cat is going to go through with the heist, and calls upon Spider-Man to stop the burglar, quietly. With a twist of bad luck, Peter find's himself helpless against the advances of a reinvigorated Cat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings:
> 
> * Semi-Graphic   
> * Non-Consent/Rape

**Chapter Nine**

**Saturday – June 28 th, 2015 – 10:33 PM**

When Peter flipped over the rail of the observation deck of the Empire State Building, Angelica was already there. He pulled off his mask as he landed, crossing the distance between them and slipping his arms around her.

“Got your text, hot stuff,” he said as she relaxed back into him, wrapping her arms around his. “What’s happening?”

She turned her head to give him access to her lips, and he kissed her gently. She lingered against him for a bit, taking a moment in his arms before opening her eyes. He watched as her expression switched from the girlfriend glow to business stare.

“Felicia is hitting the Triskelion after all,” she said.

“What? I thought you talked her out of that.”

Angelica shook her head. “Apparently, they offered her something she couldn’t turn down.”

Peter snorted. “Probably some new facial scrub she hasn’t used before. That woman is entirely too vain for her own good. When is Miss Kitty planning to do it?”

“Tonight,” Angelica said, looking out across the Manhattan skyline in the direction of the bay. From their vantage, they could just see the cylindrical top of the Triskelion beyond the other buildings.

“She is out of her mind,” Peter said, stepping away from Angel and hopping up onto the rail, resting easily on the balls of his feet. “She’s good, but she isn’t SHIELD good. Fury is going to show her every which way there is to skin a cat.”

“What are we going to do, Pete?” Angel asked, leaning against the rail next to him. “If she gets caught, that’s it. They’ll classify her as an enhanced terrorist and stick her in the Vault or worse.”

“She knows what’s she getting herself into,” Peter said. “If she isn’t going to listen to common sense—“

“She’s my friend, Pete. I can’t just let her do this, and I certainly can’t let her get sent to Super Villian Gitmo.”

Peter sighed. “Let me take care of this. If you go blazing across to stop her, everyone in New York will know something is up. I can at least be quiet about it.”

“I was hoping you’d say something like that,” Angelica said. “It’s not that I wouldn’t do it myself, just the flames sort of give me away.”

He slipped off the rail, twisting to grab it with both hands as he fell, and then pulled himself hand-over-hand until he was in front of her. He pulled up with his arms and reached out to nip at the amused smirk on her face with his teeth.

“Don’t worry about it, babe. I got you covered. Felicia and I go way back.”

Angelica frowned. “I’ve heard.”

“Please,” Peter said. “That was forever ago. How long can a crush last?”

“Really? You’re asking me, of all people, how long a crush on you can last?”

Peter grinned. “Point taken. Still, I’m all yours.”

“You better be, Parker,” Angelica said, leaning in to kiss him again. “I am not against sharing, but I will not be excluded.”

Peter shook his head. “You really are a different person in bed, you know that?”

“Complaining?”

“Not on your life,” Peter said and then let go of the rail, falling backward into the sky before slipping his mask back. With a shout, he shot his web-line and began swinging his way to the most secured facility on the eastern seaboard, if not the entire world.

Just another night.

***

**Sunday – June 29 th, 2015 – 4:02 AM**

Five hours.

That’s what went through his mind before he finally caught sight of something amiss at the Triskelion. It wasn’t like SHIELD had given him an easy stretch to watch; spread over the entire island, the SHIELD headquarters comprised of a round two-hundred-foot tower surrounded by three smaller, claw shaped towers, all connected to a central ground-floor complex. His spider-sense kept him alerted to most of the security, and his suit had long-since been modified to keep his heat signature neutral. As long as he didn’t touch the walls of the central tower with more than a few pounds of pressure, or do anything so quick as to alert the motion detectors, he was fine.

By the time the entire complex went dark, however, he was half-asleep, feet pressed against a tree between the main approach and the dock. At first, he had been happy for the sudden quiet. It was much easier to drift off in. Something bugged him about that not being right, though, and that was when he woke up enough to realize that the Black Cat was making her move.

“How in the hell did you pull this off, Felicia?” he asked, spinning a web-line and gaining some altitude, watching the grounds for any sign of movement. Felicia was good, but not knocking out power to SHIELD? This was orders of magnitude above what she was capable of deploying. Peter was getting a really, really bad feeling about all of this.

He was about to complete a third circuit of the inner towers when he spotted her entry, a hole cut into the side of the northernmost tower. If he recalled correctly, that tower was primarily taken up by research and storage, though it had been years since his access to the Triskelion had expired. For all he knew, Bert had turned the entire tower into a bakery. He landed by the window and peered in. A circular hallways followed the edge of the building, and nothing moved.

But he could smell her. Felicia’s perfume, as familiar to him as Angelica’s scent.

“Damn it, Felicia,” he said as he slipped through the hole, crawling along the ceiling and following her scent. She wasn’t wearing a lot, but still, he was certain her vanity would be what got her killed in the end. Of all the crooks he’d known over his years as Spider-Man, she remained the only one that needed to ‘pretty up’ before going on a caper.

He found her on the same floor but near the center of the tower, in a room marked a string of numbers and the word ‘Archival Storage.’ The room vaulted up three floors, with walkways surrounding the a central floor. That floor was covered by desks and tables, each with blank computer screens. The walls reminded him of a bank vault, with thousands of lockers running from floor to ceiling. Felicia crouched in front of one them, working at the lock.

He sprang from the wall and too one of the supports of the upper balcony, watching for a moment. Something was off about her, something that he couldn’t put his finger on. She looked smaller somehow, though all he could see was the white of her hair and the outline of her black suit. It had been ten minutes since the power went out. Ten minutes for SHEILD to respond, to send out units, and to get the power back on. He couldn’t imagine that it was going to last for much longer. He had to stop her and get her the hell out here before it was too late.

He leaped forward, planning to bound off a trellis-like support and web her up before landing, but his foot slipped as he hit the support. His weight shifted forward, throwing him back first into a fall and causing him to shout in surprise.

Felicia spun from her perch and threw something before bounding to the side while Spider-Man rolled with the fall, trying to launch a web-line and get himself butter-side up again. He launched up just in time for a bolo to wrap around his neck, pinning him to a beam at the edge of the balcony. He instinctively reached up to try and pull the thing free. Felicia smiled up to him and pressed something on her wrist, and the bolo made a hissing noise. Metal mesh suddenly contracted, trapping his fingers against his neck. He had to slam his feet to the pole to keep from choking.

“Spider!” Felicia said, standing up straight, still within the deep shadows. He was pinned about six feet off the floor. “Really, you should have called.”

“I see you got your luck back, Cat,” Peter said. Try as he might he couldn’t pull the bolo apart. It was just lucky he got his fingers in so that it wasn’t strangling him. “So, how’s tricks?”

Felicia stepped up to him, passing into the light. Peter couldn’t help but stare. Suddenly he knew exactly why she had taken this job. The Felicia he had known for the past twenty years was gone, replaced the girl he had first met trying to rob the Kingpin in the mid 90’s, months after he had become Spider-Man. Every trace of age, from wrinkles to weight, had been wiped away completely. Felicia had always been a voluptuous woman, and age hot not been thoroughly kind to her. Now, it looked just like she was sixteen again.

“You tell me,” she said, stretching so that he could see how good she looked, how tight her body was. Her breasts threatened to spill out of her cat-suit at any moment, the thing cut so low that her navel was showing, stitched up corset-like across her bare flesh.

“What did you do, Felicia?” he asked, trying to ignore the display. She turned around and bent over at the waist, looking up to him with her forehead resting against her ankle.

“Anything they wanted me to,” Felicia said. “And it was worth it, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, you look like a kid again,” Peter said. He tried to shake his head, but only succeeded in cutting his air supply off for a moment. “Think you can let me down?”

The Black Cat stood again and sauntered over to him, running her hand up his thighs. “No, I think you’re good where you’re at, Spider. I know how you get when you’re all self-righteous, and you are not going to spoil this for me.”

Peter winced as she scratched him. He could hear his suit rip a bit over his thigh, feel the sting of her claws.

“Are those real again?” he asked.

“What I could tell you, Spider,” she said, then sliced the costume along his other thigh. His feet were the only think stopping him from being strangled, keeping his weight off the bolo around his neck. If he tried to kick her off, he’d been out before she hit the floor. “The things they can do with a little technology these days.”

“What did you do, Cat?”

“It was actually what you did, Spider.” Felicia said. Peter jerked as he felt her tongue on the flesh of his thigh, He tried to look down, but restricted as he was, all he could see was the white top of her hair. “That costume you brought back that has caused oh so much trouble? It seems that smarter people than you or I have found all manner of marvelous uses for it.”

“You bonded with the symbiote?” Peter asked, astonished.

“No, nothing like that. You think Eddie would let anyone take his place?” He felt Felicia’s finger drift into the tear of his right leg, then suddenly rip the costume open, tearing it from his abdomen to his knee. “Some kind of injection thing, and then a trip into a vat of goo to age to the right spot again. That symbiote thing? It drains the life essence to keep itself eternally young. All it took was a few dorks in lab coats to figure out how to use a little bit of it to spread the love.”

“That’s insane, Felicia. Don’t tell me you—“

Suddenly Felicia sprang up, wrapping her legs around his waist. He grunted, and fought to keep himself stuck to the pole, repositioning so the grip with his feet was tighter. With one hand on the pole above his head, Felicia leaned way back with her other hand, sly grin on her face. Her free hand tore at his costume more before squeezing inside and taking hold of his cock.

“Stop, Cat. You’re going too far.”

“Am I?” He groaned as she tugged on him. “Feels like I am doing exactly what you want me to do.”

“What in the hell has gotten into you?” he asked. “This isn’t—“

“Bullshit, Spider,” she said, stroking him with her hand. His body responded quickly, wanting to feel her touching him. “This is hardly the first time I’ve had you in a position like this. You always complain, but you also always give in.”

He couldn’t deny that. Technically, she had near raped him a couple of times. Peter had always felt weird about that, that he would allow her to do it, and when it was done not do anything about it. It just didn’t seem right, though. If he didn’t want it, she wouldn’t be able to rape him. And, when he was twenty, he had convinced himself it was kind of awesome.

A spasm of pleasure caused his back to arch, the sensation shattering his thoughts. That was another of Felicia’s talents. She just knew exactly how, and when, to touch him.

“See?” She said, letting go of him and pressing her body against him. He felt her lips, the heat of her breath as she purred into his ear. “I know exactly what you want.”

She lowered herself on him, grinding against his shaft. The thin material of her costume did nothing to hide the heat or moisture between her legs, the need she felt as strongly as he did.

“Felicia, stop,” he begged. “Don’t do this.”

“Shut up, Parker,” she said and slapped him, hard. “I’m here for Spider-Man, not your pathetic ass.”

She slid down him and dropped to her feet before slipping her arms out of her costume and stripping it down to her waist. She left her mask on, taking his cock in one hand and lowering her mouth onto. Peter groaned and arched his back as her mouth engulfed him, fighting with himself as her tongue flicked up his length. He wanted to scream, to beg for help. He wanted to grab her by the back of the head and fuck her mouth until she gagged. The two sides fought as Felicia noisily sucked on him, tearing more of his costume away.

“No,” he said, images of Angelica dancing though his head. “Stop!”

He ripped his fingers from under the bolo, reaching down and grabbing her by the hair, pulling her head back. Within seconds his vision began to waver as the bolo constricted tight. Felicia laughed and batted his hands away. He reached back up, struggling to get purchase on the bolo again as the Black Cat continued blowing him. He twisted and tried to free himself. Only once did the warmth of her mouth recede, replaced by the fleshy softness between her breasts before her mouth found his head agin. As he started to black out, he felt the most extreme and powerful orgasm he’d ever known rip through him.

“ENOUGH!”

Light flooded the room and Peter was hit by a flash of intense heat, and then suddenly he was falling.. Felicia barely had time to jump out of the way as he hit the ground. Peter gasped for air, struggling to his knees and tossing the half melted bolo away as Angelica landed in front of him.

“Back off, Cat,” Firestar said, her voice furious. “Or I swear I will burn you to ash where you stand.”

Peter looked up to see Felicia standing there with a grin, naked from the waist up, wiping his semen from her lips. He fell again, and struggled to get to all fours.

“Are you alright, Peter?” Firestar asked, her bonfire raging, hands extended at the Black Cat.

“Yeah,” Peter said. It hurt to speak, hurt to breath. “I’ll be alright.”

“How fast are you, Red?” Cat asked, rocking from side to side on her heels. “Think you can burn a Cat before she scratches your eyes out?”

“He’s mine, Felicia,” Firestar said. “Keep your fucking hands, and mouth, off him.”

Felicia took a step back. “Wait, you’re with him?”

“Yes!” Firestar said, her bonfire flashing with intensity. “And I do not share!”

Felicia put her hands up. “I didn’t know. You know I wouldn’t play with your toys.”

Peter got to his feet, rubbing at his neck. Angelica looked sidelong at him, her face twisted with rage.

“Firestar, stop,” he said. “She’s done.”

Angelica growled and turned back to Felicia, who was in the process of pulling her catsuit back over her breasts. “How could you, Cat?”

“You didn’t tell me he was yours!” Felicia said, stamping her foot. “I thought I finally had a chance to get my Spider back. I didn’t know you were after Parker.”

Firestar’s blaze subsided, and she motioned at Peter. “They’re the same person, Cat!”

Felicia smirked at Angelica. “No, they aren’t. You should get to know them better, Red. Spider is far more exciting than that boring wet-blanket underneath the mask.”

“Not to sound to sound like a wet-blanket,” Peter said, putting himself between the ladies, “but any minute now SHIELD is going to storm in here and be very, very irate.”

Firestar took a deep breath. “Tuck it away, Peter.”

“Shit,” Peter said, looking down and trying to find some way to stretch his costume over his groin.

“Parker’s actually got a point,” Felicia said, glancing at her wrist. “We’ve only got a few minutes left before the lights come on.”

“Fine,” Firestar said, then pointed a finger at Black Cat. “This is not over.”

Felicia grinned in response. “Promise?”

“I am not kidding, Felicia,” Firestar said, her corona blazing forth again. “You have no idea how pissed I am right now.”

Felicia slipped her mask up, a look of shame and contrition on her face. “Seriously, Red, I didn’t know. You know I wouldn’t—“

“Tick-tock, tick-tock,” Peter reminded them, his hands over his crotch.

“Let’s go,” Firestar said, turning to the door.

“Yeah, just let me get—“ Felicia began.

“Now!” Peter and Angelica said in unison. Felicia pouted for a second then slipped her mask back into place. The three of them ran down the hall. Already Peter could hear the sounds of teams in the building, likely alerted by Firestar’s aura. Angelica stopped them as they neared Felicia’s hole.

“I’ll draw them away,” she said. “You two get the hell out of here as quick as you can.”

Peter looked to Felicia, who smiled back to him.

“Go your own way, Cat. I am not waiting up for you.”

Felicia shrugged. “I have my own way off the island anyway. I’ll call you, Red.”

“Don’t bother,” Firestar said as she blasted off through the hole, lighting the sky while lifting into it.

Felicia shook her head, and Peter could swear that she actually looked ashamed of herself. Then she shrugged and jumped through the hole.

“Good to taste you again, Spider. Until next time.”

Peter shook his head and jumped through the hole, launching web-lines and spinning himself into the air. The draft was more than just bracing, but there was nothing he could really do about it. He got himself out deep into the bay before finding a barge to cling to, covering his crotch in webs so the morning commuters didn’t get to see more of their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man than they were used to.

All in all, it had been one fucked up night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *** I had originally planned on this scene turning into a three-way, but it just wasn't justified (or likely to happen, given the timing of the event). I am not removing the Angelica/Peter/Felicia tag yet, but it may not happen, as an FYI. Sometimes the story evolves along different paths that you intended.


	10. Floater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends answer the call when someone is found floating in the Hudson. Later on, Peter meets with a SHIELD contact, hoping to for some insight in to what is happening in NYC.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Minor Character Death  
> \- Coping with sexual assault.

**Monday – June 30 th, 2015 – 5:45 AM**

“We have to talk about it at some point.”

If there was ever a time that Spider-Man had wished Firestar would shut the hell up, it was now. He crouched on the edge of a warehouse overlooking the river, watching the stream of lights below. Firestar stood with one boot on the lip of the building, watching him instead of the river.

“What’s to talk about?” Spidey asked. He felt stupid, crouched there in half his costume, with a pair of jeans standing in for his leggings. The only time he’d ever looked more ridiculous had involved a spare Fantastic Four uniform and a paper bag. “I should have worn the damn bag!”

“What?” Firestar asked.

Spider-Man shook his head. “Remind me to tell you about the Bombastic Bag-Man someday.”

“Bombasti… Peter, stop avoiding the issue.”

“Mask, on,” Spider-Man said, hitching a thumb at his own head. “Please keep the monickers to approved list of Spider-Man, Spidey, Webhead, or Your Royal Badass of Funk.”

Firestar sighed and looked down to the river. “Fine, if we’re going to avoid the Black Cat deal, can we just go already?”

“We need to do this as a team,” Spider-Man said. He pulled out his shiny new Starkphone. It was the model JRVS, with built in AI virtual assistant, sixty-four gigs of memory, and a button launched America’s nuclear payload. Or at least, that’s what he imagined it did. A gift from Bobby after his old phone got trashed, he had been unable to say no. He flicked to his text messages and hit Bobby’s face with his thumb.

‘ _w r u?’_ he typed.

“Why? We do things apart all the time. The city is too damn busy to show up all at once,” Firestar said.

“That’s the point, though. We need to start tackling this stuff together, let people know that an actual team is handling it. Individual saves are great and all, but people feel better when they think something organized is happening. There are cameras down there… I want them to see us together.”

Firestar sat down on the lip of the building and yawned, stretching wide. Peter took the chance to snap a picture of her, getting a great shot of her boobs from the side silhouetted against the rising sun.

“That’s a keeper,” he said, proud of himself.

Firestar tried to snatch his phone away, but the spidey-sense sent him tumbling away and sticking to the wall of the roof access as he got a return text.

‘ _It’s early, man. You text like a fucking child._ ’

Spidey’s thumbs went to work. ‘ _evs. how long til u get here?_ ’

“Is he close yet?” Firestar asked, impatience and lack of sleep mixing in her voice.

“You know Iceman. He’s probably freezing everyone’s coffee out of spite on the way down.”

‘ _Three minutes, tops. If I don’t have to keep texting you.’_

He flicked the phone off and slipped into his jeans pocket. At least that was convenient. When Firestar stood up to stretch and yawn again, he waited until she had begun to relax before pegging her in both cheeks of her butt with webs and pulling her into him. She squealed, a rush of heat melting the webs away, but not before sending her into his waiting arms.

“It’s just not a big deal, okay?” He pulled his mask up so they could look eye to eye. “This thing with Felicia… she’s done it before. It’s just how she is, something between us. I used to look forward to it.”

“So, you wanted it to happen?” Angelica asked. “Because it sounded like you were pretty against it.”

Peter sighed and looked off to the river, but Angel took him by the chin and forced his eyes back into hers.

“Don’t. Don’t run away from this. Peter, she raped you.” Her voice was firm, but with an edge of empathy. “You need to accept that. You did not want it to happen, and you were in no position to stop her. She raped you.”

“It’s just that—“

“Don’t,” Angelica said, her voice still firm. “Don’t give me any of that ‘guys can’t get raped’ crap, or the ‘I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want it’ bullshit either. You had a physical response to someone you obviously find attractive, but that doesn’t mean you wanted it or permitted it. If Brad Pitt started fingering me, I’d probably come, too. But that doesn’t mean I’d allow him to do it, just like you didn’t give Felicia permission to use you. And that is what she did, Peter. She used you.”

 He couldn’t look away from her eyes. Emotions rolled within him, but he just couldn’t voice them. It seemed so stupid, so childish, for him to complain about what happened. Part of him wanted to cheer at what she was saying, part of him wanted to argue. Part of him was ashamed, while another part tried to tell the rest of him that at least he got a blowjob out of it. Most of all, though, he just felt cold. Even Angelica’s heat couldn’t warm him up, as much as he wanted it to.

The sound of an approaching ice sled brought Peter’s head to the side. When he looked back at Angelica, she reached up and brushed the tear off his cheek.

“It’s okay, Peter,” she said softly. “And it’s not your fault. We’ll talk later.”

Peter nodded, grateful as he slid back under the mask of Spider-Man. Spider-Man was impenetrable. Spider-Man was untouchable. Spider-Man was a god damn superhero, and superheroes never looked weak or foolish. He sprang into the air, flipping twice and landing as Iceman skidded to a stop on the building top. He took once glance at Spider-Man and burst into laughter.

Spider-Man looked down at his jeans and cursed.

“Don’t start, snowball. It’s been a long couple of days.”

“Tell me about,” Iceman said once he recovered. He leaned in to kiss Firestar on the cheek, leaving a trace of steam in the air as he moved away. “I ran into Mole Man, of all people, last night. You wouldn’t believe how many rats that man travels with.”

“What was he after?” Firestar asked.

Iceman shook his head. “Just causing shit. Like the rest of this crime wave, it doesn’t seem to make any sense. Everyone is just hitting whatever happens to be convenient. Even the mob is up in arms about it, now. From what I hear, the families are calling in support from Jersey to keep their businesses safe from all this nonsense.”

Spider-Man stepped to the edge of the building and looked down. The response team was still NYPD, no sign of SHIELD at all.

“Well, let’s do this before Fury’s hall monitors descend on us.”

Iceman stepped to stand beside him, looking down. “You sure it’s him?”

“Only one way to find out.” Spider-Man leaped over the edge of the building, swinging his way to the cops on the bank, Firestar and Iceman seconds behind. AS they landed, the local news crews pointed their cameras up, and the few bystanders pointed their phones. A suited detective turned from the water’s edge as they landed, and approached quickly.

“About time one of you whackos showed up,” he said, motioning the uniformed cop to let them pass the police line.

“Good morning to you to, Detective,” Peter said cheerily. “How’s the fish biting?”

“Detective Lee,” the man said, extending his hand. Spider-Man shook it, then fell into step next to him as they walked back to the river. “Joggers found him floating about thirty minutes ago.”

They made it to the edge of the river, and looked over. Ten feet below, where the water of the Hudson lapped against a concrete seawall, where the enormous bulk of the Rhino floated face down.

“Dear god,” Firestar said, turning back at the stench. Spider-Man lifted his hand to his nose, nodding a little.

“Yeah, that’s not pleasant.”

“Tell me about it,” Detective Lee said. “We’re going to have to get a crane to get his fat ass out of there. Damage Control said they can’t respond for another hour, something about frozen sewage through half of Midtown.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Iceman said. “My bad.”

Spider-Man glanced at Iceman, who shrugged sheepishly, then back to the detective.

“What about SHIELD?”

“They asked us to deliver him, if you can believe it.” The cop motioned at the body. “It’s kind of like the old days, huh? Before SHIELD and the Avengers took over.”

Spider-Man put his hand on the Detective’s shoulder and nodded. “Keeps it exciting though, right?”

The detective shook his head and laughed. They waited for the crane to arrive, watching as Alexei’s massive body lifted from the river. It took Spider-Man’s strength, and a slick provided by Iceman, for them to roll the behemoth over so the medical examiner could get a good look. Peter looked down at the dead villain’s face. Black veins shot through his cheeks and jaw, and his skin was a pale white that looked almost creamy. The smell was horrendous, but not especially the odor of rot, more like spoiled milk.

“Do you have any idea?” Spider-Man asked the examiner, to which the man shook his head.

“There are no physical wounds, not signs of trauma anywhere,” the woman said. “Without doing an autopsy and tox screen, I wouldn’t even want to guess.”

Spider-Man helped them load the body of Rhino on a trailer, and then thanked the cops for the help. They left the scene behind, gathering on the rooftop above again.

“So what the hell do we do now?” Iceman asked.

Spider-Man was already pulling out his phone, typing in a new number.

“Now, we contact someone we probably should have called a long time ago.”

###

**Monday – June 30 th, 2015 – 5:30 PM**

Peter sat on a bench, hands in the pockets of his windbreaker, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. He knew he looked conspicuous, but the man sitting next to him looked even more so. He was wearing a suit and dark glasses, but also added a newspaper to his _in cognito_ attire. Peter knew they weren;t fooling anyone that passed. They could only be sitting there for one of two reasons; one, they were meeting to trade secret information, or two, they were having a Grindr hookup.

“Thanks for meeting me, boss,” Peter said after waiting for a couple of people to jog by.

“I would have gotten back to you sooner, but you wouldn’t believe how backed up the office is right now. It’s worse than after we threw Bruce Banner a surprise party.” Phil Coulson sighed and shook his head. “We really should have seen that coming.”

Peter looked over to Coulson, trying to tell if the man was serious or not. It was always impossible to tell.

“Any word on when the A-holes are going to get home? Things are getting a little edgy around here.”

“That’s classified,” Coulson said. “And it will remain classified until we can figure out where they are, what they are doing, and when they are coming back.”

Peter rolled his eyes skyward. “What about the B-team? Wasn’t this project supposed to eventually end with more Avengers? What’s Falcon up to these days? Or Ant-Man?”

“Really? That’s what you drug me out here for? To ask if SHIELD has a nanny-cam pointed at Hank Pym?”

“No, not—“

“We do, of course.” Coulson interrupted. “It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on assets. Especially ones with shrink rays and volatile tempers. You wouldn’t believe how close ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’ came to being a documentary.”

Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, ignoring the look of distaste on Coulson’s face.

“I actually need to know what’s up with Rhino.”

“I figured as much,” Coulson said, waving the smoke away with one hand. “I was hoping you were going to come clean on the little breaking and entering escapade, but I figured it would be Sytsevich.”

Peter sighed. “You found out, huh?”

“You can’t keep things like that from us, Peter. We’re SHIELD. By the time you’ve thought to cover you tracks, we’ve already made a meme out of it and emailed it around the office. It’s pretty clear you and Jones were there to stop Hardy, though. We lost your entrance, but caught the escape. I can only imagine what the fight was like to cause that kind of damage to your costume.”

Peter should have been ready with a quip, some smartass thing to say back. Instead, all he could do was look at his shoes. He felt cold again.

Coulson seemed to pick up on his discomfort, and carried along smoothly. “Your big friend starved to death.”

“What?” Peter said, the cigarette dropping out of his mouth. Before he could pick it up off the ground, Coulson casually put a foot out and stepped on it. 

“How is that possible? Did you see the size of him?”

“It was hard to miss. But it’s more complicated than that. Something was blocking the basic transfer of energy throughout his body. His cells were literally starving, and they started breaking down.”

“That’s why he looked all milky,” Peter said. He pulled out his pack again, but Coulson reached out and plucked them from his hand, pitching them into the woods. Peter flipped a web-line after them, snatching them back to his hand before giving up and putting them away. “What could have caused that?”

“Same thing that causes everything,” Coulson said, leaning forward and clasping his hands between his knees. “Steve Rogers.”

“What, did he sock old Rhino in the jaw extra hard?”

“Sytsevich had a new version of the Octavius-Osborn injection rushing through him, bringing all of its knock-off Super Soldier side effects with it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Peter said, resisting the urge to reach for his pack. “I thought with both Osborn and Octavius dead, and Conners locked away in Super Gitmo, that we’d seen the last of that.”

“We had, for the longest time. For thirty years, people tried their damndest to recreate the Super Soldier serum. To my knowledge, the closest anyone ever came were the Russians, but Octavius’ work on cross-species genetics was getting there. Things died out in the nineties when mutants started popping up everywhere. You know, flavor of the week and all.  Now that Steve is back, though, a new generation of wannabees are trying to match Dr. Erskine’s secret sauce.”

“So who is dumb enough to inject someone like Rhino?” Peter asked. “Even on his best days, Alexei was a bit unstable.”

Coulson shook his head. “I wish I could tell you. We’ve been looking for you cat lady friend to ask her.”

“Black Cat? Why?”

“She stole a sample of Captain America’s blood from the Triskelion.”

“No she didn’t,” Peter said. “Firestar and I stopped her.”

“Yeah, she waited about ten minutes and then came back in. Luckily for her, the rush of power back into our system after the blackout she caused overloaded it, so it went back down for about five minutes again. She got back to the archives just as our team was leaving, avoided them, and got the goods.”

“She’s got her powers again,” Peter said. “Claws and bad luck.”

“That might have been nice to know. It explains why we are having such a hard time tracking her down.”

Peter cursed and looked out to the city skyline.

“All of this is connected. Somehow, someone set all of this up. The Avengers being away, the Fantastic Four, all of it. But none of the chuckleheads in the Sinister Six are up to this level of manipulation. If they had Otto or Norman leading them? Sure. But these guys have the collective brainpower of slightly used toaster. They couldn’t pull off masterminding a bake sale, much less a city wide crime-spree.”

“Looking back on it, I am kind of glad you turned us down,” Coulson said, leaning back into the bench. “If you had joined the Initiative, we wouldn’t have you to help pull things back together now.”

“Do you think SHIELD might sponsor me and my amazing friends?” Peter asked hopefully.

“What do you need?”

“Something to knock the black off of Venom would be nice. Maybe an app for my Starkphone that plays _La Cucaracha_ whenever Chameleon is near. He pulled a quick over Iceman and I a few days ago.”

“I’ll see to it,” Coulson said, and then stood. “In case it needs to be said, you’re doing a good job, Peter.”

Peter stood and smiled, warmly shaking Coulson’s offered hand.

“Thanks, Phil. You’re a peach.”

“Just do me a favor and watch your ass, Parker,” Coulson said, slipping his sunglasses back on. “I’ve got a bad feeling that this hasn’t even begun to play out yet.”

Peter watched as his friend departed down the jogging path before pulling a cigarette out and lighting it.

“You and me both, buddy.”


	11. Omega-Level

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Venom and Mysterio raid Osborn Chemicals, but Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends are ready to bring them to a halt. Equipped with a new costume, Spidey faces down a version of Venom enhanced by the knock-off Super Soldier Serum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Major Character Death

**Chapter Eleven**

**Thursday – July 2 nd, 2015 – 3:37 PM**

A wad of black goo slammed Spider-Man in the face hard enough to flip him backward in midair.

Spidey pulled at the mass on his mask as he tumbled and twisted through the air, feeling the familiar grip as gravity tried to pull him home. He twisted and struggled, pulling with all his strength, trying to dislodge the crap before it managed to strangle him. This close, he could feel the impulse of the symbiote, the desire it had to bond with him again and its hatred because he had refused it. All he managed to do was stretch it enough to get some off of his eye-plates, and he scanned around wildly.

He let go of the goop and shot three quick web-lines, the first to halt his descent, the second to pull himself hard toward a building, and the last to swing him more carefully toward it. He released the web-line and spun, pulling at the goo with both hands now as his feet stuck gently to the window of a high rise. It took all he had in him, but finally he ripped the mass free and slapped it against the building with a sickening slurp before jumping away. Detached from the main mass of Venom, it would dry up and die within a few minutes.

“You know, that’s how your lungs feel every time you suck down one of those cancer sticks,” Firestar yelled at him as she flew by.

“Really not the time,” Spider-Man yelled, spinning a new web-line and pulling himself after Venom. Like Rhino, the villain had gained an enormous amount of mass, as if the symbiote had decided to bond with Schwarzenegger, and then forced him to eat Dolph Lundgren before going out to play. It amazed Spidey that the enormous bulk could get airborne, much less swing without breaking the inky black tendrils it pretended were proper webs.

He swung high, rising above Venom and releasing, going into a forward tuck and flipping toward the foe. Venom surprised him by spinning in midair, twisting and contorting into a raised leg tuck that made Spidey wince looking at it. Facing him head-on, two inky tentacles extended from Venoms shoulders and shot at him, wrapping around his legs and spinning him to the side. Spidey screamed as they released, desperately spinning webs as he flew out of control directly into Firestar.

“Pete!” he heard her scream and then felt the approaching heat die out. He slammed into her with some force, twisting and grabbing on to her with one arm as his web-line finally snagged something. Knowing he couldn’t stop, she had snuffed out her flames instead of burn him when he hit.

“God I hope Bobby is having a better time at this,” Firestar said, her voice filled pain.

As if her words were some kind of arcane summoning ritual, the outer bank of windows at Osborn Chemicals blew outward in a flash of fire and shattering glass. The shiny form of Iceman came spiraling out of the explosion, rocketing across the gulf before bouncing off the building on the far side. Peter released his web-line and twisted on to his back, Firestar screaming as their momentum changed. He shot two web-lines at Iceman, bringing his friend vertical with one and dragging him away from falling debris with the other. Iceman waved and brought his hands out, forming an ice-ramp.

“Guess not,” Firestar said and let go, falling a few feet before igniting once more.

Spidey twisted and brought his legs up, attaching two new web-lines meant to take him higher again just as Venom tackled him mid-air from behind. Spidey barely had time to see Mysterio appear in the hole at the Osborn building before Venom twisted him around bodily so they were face-to-maw.

“Parker!” Venom yelled as they flew through the air, his elongated tongue brushing over Peter’s mask.

“I told you Eddie, I am not into hentai!” Spidey yelled, launching a line before lopping it around Venom’s waist. He let Eddie hold onto him and shifted upward, using both hands to deliver a series of punches directly into Venom’s maw. Teeth, ooze, and slobber flew through the air until the web-line suddenly went tight. Spidey kicked with his legs and sprang away as Venom’s momentum halted, but only until his weight pulled Mysterio out of the window by his stupid helmet and they both went falling to the ground, Spidey’s web-line going slack between them.

By the time Spidey was clinging securely to the side of a building again, Mysterio was floating slowly to the ground, surrounded by cloud of purple smoke, one arm raised dramatically while the other clung to the strap of a backpack over his shoulder. Venom had chosen to just impact with the ground, and lay in the middle of a crater of asphalt, barely moving. Spidey raised his arms to web up Mysterio, but Iceman skated past him before he could get a clear shot, spiraling around the villian and leaving a circular cage of ice behind him. Mysterio banked left and then right, but couldn’t find a way out of the spiral of ice ramps. He looked up and began to ascend, but Firestar hovered above.

Spidey landed on Iceman’s ramp and slid down the curving spiral, waving at Mysterio as the villain began to descend again. Mysterio’s distorted voice echoed a frustrated scream before the purple smoke really began pouring, obscuring him from view. By the time Spidey made it to the ground, the ice cage extended up in the air more than seventy feet before disappearing into the cloud of smoke.

“That should just about be that,” Iceman said, stepping next to Spider-Man as the two watched the cloud slowly descend. “Think he’s going to want to fight us—“

Bobby dropped and slammed face first into the ground, brought down by black tendrils extending from a pool under his feet. Spidey jumped to the side just as Venom landed, slamming both hands into the ground where he had been standing, cracking the pavement open.

“Rude!” Spidey yelled from the side of a light pole. “How would you feel if we interrupted you every time you were about to say something?”

“Parker!” Venom said, several tendrils extending as it yelled. “We’re going to—“

Peter pushed off the pole with all his strength, driving both his fists into Venom’s mouth. The force of the blow parted the symbiote for a moment, and Spidey could see Eddie Brock’s body through the swaths of inky black. Everything about him was wrong; muscles bulged in ways a human body never should, veins engorged to the point of busting all over his form. The symbiote swarmed over Eddie again as they landed and bounced across the pavement.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t like it very much, would you?” Spidey said. He launched a web and snagged Venom’s foot, keeping it taunt and pulling hard, swinging the still dazed villain into one of the columns supporting the glass and steel awning of Osborn Chemicals.

“Fuck, he’s gone Super Sayan, Frosty!” Spidey called out.

“I thought you weren’t into that kind of stuff,” Iceman said, extending his hands and spraying Venom with ice.

“Well, not into the tentacle stuff.”

“Watch out!”

Firestar’s voice echoed from above and they both turned. The purple smoke spread across the ground and Mysterio stepped from it, some strange metallic rife held in his hands and aimed at Iceman. A beam of light erupted and struck Iceman in the chest, exactly as it had done with Sandman.

“Bobby!” Spider-Man screamed, turning to his friend. Iceman looked to Spiderman and then touched his chest.

“Nothing!” he said, tapping the ice.

Firestar landed next to Spidey as he came up to examine Iceman’s chest. “This is the same thing that happened to Flint. It took a second before it started doing anything.”

A few flakes of frost shook off Iceman as he moved his arms. Iceman got a confused look on his face, then brought up his hands. Every movement shook snow and ice off his form, and the ice that made Bobby’s form began to crack.

“No…” Spider-Man said.

Iceman shrugged and snapped his fingers. The ice crumbled away, leaving Bobby Drake in his white and blue costume underneath.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Whatever it is, it just shattered the ice.”

Spider grabbed Bobby by the shoulders, looking him over. “Are you sure?”

“I’m fine,” Bobby said, then squinted. “What the hell is that?”

Bobby started to reach out at Spiderman’s neck, but Firestar’s voice caused them both to pause.

“He’s gone,” she said. “Mysterio!”

They turned to find the smoke cleared, but the fishbowl-helmeted Mysterio missing.

“Damn it,” Spider-Man said. He leaped over to where Mysterio had been, scanning the street and the skyline. The bystanders had all taken cover, and they looked around for Mysterio, just as unsure as he was.

A roar and the sound of shattering ice brought his attention back to the roided out version of Venom. As Bobby began to form a new body of ice armor, Firestar ran to stand next to him.

“What do we do?” She asked. “Nothing is stopping him.”

Spidey shook his head. At this point, he was just happy his new suit was holding out. It wasn’t the Reed Richards special he had been wearing for years, but at least it wasn’t jeans or sweatpants.

“I have no idea,” he said. “Keep pounding on him until we’re too tired to smack him anymore?”

Bobby flew past them and slammed into the side of a taxi, taken by surprise while forming his armor.

“Not really liking that plan,” Firestar yelled and shot a plume of flame at Venom.

The beast screeched and sprang over the beam, sticking to the side of the chemical building. He then jumped forward, crossing the distance in a heartbeat and punching Spider-Man in the face. Spidey felt the world tilt as he was thrown back by the blow, bouncing and rolling on the pavement. He barely had time to roll out of the way as Venom landed, smashing a fist where his head had just been. Spidey kept on the defensive, jumping back with each attack until Venom backed off, Firestar’s fire causing him to leap away.

“I’ve got an idea,” Spider-Man yelled as he got to his feet. He jumped over to Iceman and helped pull him out of the wreckage of the cab. “How cold can you get?”

“Omega-level, motherfucker,” Iceman said with a smile.

“The symbiote goes inert in space,” Spidey said.

“Oh, that cold.” Iceman nodded slowly. “Yeah, yeah, I think I can—“

“Firestar, hit him like you did Cassidy.” Spidey said and ran toward Venom. Venom responded by screaming a high-pitched roar, crashing up the street to meet him head on.

“But that won’t work on—“

“Just do it!” Spidey screamed and launched into the air. He launched two sprays of web fluid into Venom’s face, springing over the charging beast and landing on the ground beyond him. Just as he had done with Rhino so many times, Spider-Man fell back and launched two new web-lines, catching Venom in the ankles. Taking them in his hands, he the then leaped into the air and flipped forward, yanking the web-lines with all his might.

“Alley-oop!” He yelled and pulled Venom into the air, letting go of the webs so that he rocketed up thirty feet off the ground. Firestar blazed and unleashed her normal restraints, glowing so brightly that Peter had to look away for a moment.

“Get ready Snowball!” He yelled as Firestar released a blast of pure radiation directly at Venom, like a small scale solar flare releasing off her body and striking the form. Venom’s screech was so loud that windows shattered. The black mass of the symbiote exploded around Eddie’s body, uncovering the man within. Spidey tagged him in the chest with a web-line and yanked with all his life, ripping the body of Eddie Brock from out of the mass before it closed in again.

“Now!” Spidey screamed, rushing forward to catch Eddie.

A wave of cold so intense that it defied Spider-Man’s definition of cold brought him to his knees. Eddie Brock’s body bounded as it hit the pavement, his naked skin coating in frost. Spider-Man curled in on himself in a fetal position, the shock of the cold like a knife through his core. He closed his eyes and felt his lashes freeze to his skin until a sudden warmth surrounded him. He clutched on to Firestar for dear life, letting her keep him safe.

When it was done, there was a chuck of ice in the street about ten feet tall and four feet around. It was so clear and pure that Spidey could clearly see the inky black mass of the symbiote inside, completely still. The ground around the ice began to freeze, spreading away from the base slowly.

“I have to find somewhere to put this,” Iceman said, looking to them. Firestar helped Spidey up, His new costume, now completely soaked, stuck to him in the most uncomfortable way.

“What did you do?” Spidey asked as he walked over to Iceman, hopping on one foot for a second to dig a handful of wet fabric out of his butt. It had been a while since he’d had a wedgie.

Iceman glanced at him and then reached out. Spidey felt something snap from off his costume, and then cursed.

Iceman held a label in his hand, then looked over at Spidey.

“Really, man? Wal-mart?”

“What?” Spidey demanded. “I needed a new costume, and it’s not like I can I sew for crap.”

“I could have called someone in Rochester,” Iceman said, “or SHIELD or someone!”

“Can we focus here?” Spider-Man asked. “Is that thing going to be able to break out of that?”

Iceman shook his head. They watched as Firestar walked over to the ice, tapping it with her flaming knuckles. It didn’t even steam.

“No, that’s about as cold as you can physically get in our universe,” Iceman said. “Problem is that it’s going to freeze everything around it unless I can find somewhere safe to put it.”

“That’s bad.” Spider-Man said. “What kind of range are we talking.”

“I’m not sure. Probably global, though.”

“God damn, Frosty.” Spider-Man said, unable to keep how impressed he was out of his voice. “You can do that?”

“Omega-level, baby.” Iceman said, shooting him a pistol wink.

“Albright, we’ll get SHIELD on this. I am sure they have got something they can contain it with.”

“Uh, guys?” Firestar said. They both looked over to where she stood over the form of Eddie Brock.

“Is he frozen?” Spidey asked as they walked over.

Firestar shook her head. “I was hot enough to keep him warm, too. It’s not that.”

“God damn,” Iceman said as they got close.

Spider-Man kneeled down and closed the staring eyes of Eddie Brock. While his body was still engorged from whatever form of the Super Soldier Serum he’d taken, it was now also old and feeble, twisted with age to a point that Spider couldn’t even fathom. Eddie Brock was finally free of the symbiote, once and for all, and the process had killed him.

Spider-Man looked down and put hand on Eddie’s once powerful chest. The skin flaked away like dried parchment.

“Separating from symbiote drained the life out of him, just like Felecia said. It killed him,” Peter said, pulling his mask off. He felt Firestar put her hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently. He covered her hand with his own, shaking his head and trying to fight against the wave of guilt rising in his throat.

“I killed him.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to update, but I've had a lot of editing work to do lately, and I got completely consumed by X-Com 2. I should have the rest of the story finished off in short order. 
> 
> I hope the action in this isn't too confusing. Blocking and writing a five-person battle midair is incredibly difficult. Would love to hear any feedback on the story so far!


	12. Steam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter sinks into depression with the death of another enemy. It is up to his Amazing Friends to bring him out of the dark, and lead him down a road he'd never dared to take before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the huge delay, it's been busy with getting a podcast out of hiatus and getting work done on other projects. 
> 
> Warning: M/M/F Threesome, with some M/M action.
> 
> Promise: The story is quickly approaching the end point, and now that some IRL things are taken care of and back on track, it will not be huge delays in updates from here out. Thank you again for your patience, and I apologize for the delay.

**Chapter Twelve:**

**Thursday – July 2 nd, 2015 – 10:04 PM**

Peter thumbed the top off his beer. The metal cap stuck for a moment, giving the slightest resistance before giving way to his spider-enhanced strength. The cap burst free with incredible momentum, rocketing toward the wall opposite the couch with the intent to imbed itself in the drywall, or maybe burst through to the outside world altogether. Peter tracked its course with his spider-enhanced senses, shot a web with precision timing thanks to his spider-enhanced reflexes, and ripped it back to his hand, averting disaster.

This he could do. Parlor tricks and flips. He danced the cap over his finger, every impulse in his body screaming at him to throw the damn thing through the wall with all his might.

“Reed dies, you’re stoic,” Bobby said from somewhere distant. Peter ripped his eyes off the cap, looking across the three feet separating them, where Bobby rested in an easy chair.

“What?”

“Just commenting on how fucked up you are, Peter,” Bobby said, sipping his own beer. Bobby was on his second. Peter had lost count of his own. “Reed dies, you’re stoic. Ben dies, you’re stoic. In fact, I’ve seen you at the funerals of a few of the home team, and you take it all in stride. But when the guys that have kicking the shit out of you for the past twenty years start dropping? You’d think someone had just stabbed your favorite kitten and written an apology in its blood.”

Peter went back to glaring at the bottle cap.

“I know,” he said, then calmly put the cap down on the side table next to his empty bottles. “I don’t know what is wrong with me.”

“I could start making a list,” Bobby offered.

“Not now, Bobby” Angelica said. She sat next to him on the couch, but kept her distance. Peter took a long drink of his beer, trying to will the anger and aggression that he felt raging within him away, the fury that was keeping her from cuddling in close to him and making it all better. He couldn’t let go of it, though. Eddie’s death, added to the deaths of Sandman and Rhino, filled with something intense, and anger and impotent frustration were the only ways he knew to express it.

“There has got to be something I could have done,” Peter said. It was the first time he’d said it, and from the look on his friends’ faces, it was something they had been waiting for him to say.

“No, you couldn’t have,” they said in unison before looking at each other. Angel motioned with her hand, giving Bobby the floor.

“This is totally beyond anything you could have done, Pete,” Bobby said. “There is no way you could have known what would have happened, and even if you did, Venom brought this on himself. Same with Rhino.”

“And Flint?”

Bobby shook his head, and Angelica spoke up.  “Flint Marko was trying to do that right thing. He got killed for doing the right thing, but he was a grown man… a super-powered man at that. It wasn’t your responsibility to save him, but you tried anyway.”

Peter leaned forward. “I’ve beaten them all so many times, but I couldn’t do it in time to save him this time.”

“But you still made the effort,” Angel said. “Flint knows that. He died knowing that. And because you made that effort, he didn’t die alone, thinking the world hated him. He knew that you were there with him, and that you cared.”

Peter looked over to her. She leaned forward on the couch as well, mirroring his posture. He started to take a drink of his beer, but instead put the bottle down and put his hand on hers. She took his offer and squeezed his hand, smiling gently to him. She and Bobby still wore their costumes, only Firestar’s mask tossed on the coffee table. Peter had stripped off the wet store-bought costume for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt after discovering a rip up one of the seams under the armpit. He was going to have to buy another one. Hopefully the clearance sale would still be going on tomorrow.

He took another pull of his beer, wondering if he should blast the company that made the costume for poor quality materials from his official Twitter account.

“We’re being played,” Bobby said.

“You think?” Peter asked. “Every criminal in the city is up to something, and it seems like all we can do is respond to fires instead of figuring out what is starting them.”

“All of this surrounds the Sinister Six and the Super-Soldier programs,” Bobby said, leaning back and motioning with his bottle. “All of it is tied up in the research Osborn did for his version of it.”

“The Goblin formula,” Peter said.

“Not just it,” Bobby said. “The derivatives, as well. What Otto Octavius and Kurt Conners did with it as well. The cross-species stuff. That’s always been the motive behind the Six, making those formulas more powerful, making them last longer and with few side-effects.”

“That was Osborn’s passion,” Peter said. “The man was obsessed with Captain America. Octavius was in it for the science, and Conners? Well, he saw the brilliance of Octavius’ cross-species work and tried to use it to heal his own issue, with the end goal of helping amputees across the world. But you see the basic problem with the formula that Otto couldn’t get work out.”

“What’s that?” Angel asked.

“The craziness,” Peter said, motioning with his bottle. “In the Osborns, both Norman and Harry, the goblin potion turned them fucking bonkers… Harry less so than Norman, but the version Harry took had the benefit of some of Otto’s iterations. Conners? It locked away the more evolved portions of his mind, giving him the lizard brain and instincts but with the knowledge and problem-solving capability of higher intelligence. In both cases, it’s the mental strain that can’t be overcome. It’s the same with other people unlocking Cap’s super-juice, like the Hulk. We can figure out the physical element, but the psychological strain is just too much.”

“Unless your name is Steve Rogers,” Angelica added.

Peter pressed his fingers to his temples, rubbing gently. “Everything that’s fucked up in the world can be traced back to one of the best things that ever happened. You got to wonder if it keeps Cap up at night, thinking about all this shit people have done trying to recreate him.”

Angelica batted at his hands, then scooted him around so he was lying across her. Her fingers came up and began to massage his scalp gently. Peter smiled and closed his eyes.

“I’m pretty sure it does,” Angel said. “The same way you sit up torturing yourself over shit that isn’t your fault, also.”

Bobby chuckled. “Yeah, there’s a pot and kettle joke to be made here, somewhere.”

“Fuck off,” Peter grumbled. “Things aren’t always so cut and dry.”

“Please,” Bobby got up and sat down on the other end of the couch, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. “I’ve been hitting it with the X-Men for years. Angel can tell you, being part of the team is awesome, but everyone of those fuckers is a pile of brooding angst just waiting to goth out at a moment’s notice.”

“Yeah, it’s awesome if you’re on the A-list. B-list is better. C-list is boring,” Angel said. “I like to call it the ‘grade-all-the-papers-and-make-sure-the-Danger-Room-is-clean’ team, and I was the god damn captain.”

“We can’t all be Omega-level, baby.”

“I am going to brand that on your forehead,” Angelica warned. Peter opened his eyes as a brush of heat washed over his forehead, and grinned as Bobby started to hop up.

“He does like to remind of us of that a lot.”

“Haters gonna hate, as Tay-Tay would say,” Bobby said, settling back into the couch. “You just let your jealousy run your lives.”

“See? If there was ever a thing that would prove gayness, it’s invoking Tay-Tay.” Peter grinned and pointed at Bobby.

Bobby shook his head. “Why does me being gay keep coming up with you? I don’t take every chance I can to joke about your straightness.”

Peter shrugged. “To know me is to love me.”

Bobby rolled his eyes as Angel spoke. “Don’t let him fool you. He’s not as strictly gay as he likes everyone to think.”

Peter glanced up to Angelica, who was smiling fondly at Bobby. Bobby held out his hand and waved it back and forth.

“I’m pretty committed these days.”

“Yeah, until you see something with a pussy that catches your interest for more than a moment,” Angel said.

Peter’s eyes went wide, and a grin split his face. Just hearing her use vulgarities always surprised and excited him. Bobby’s cool and calm demeanor was ruined as he choked on his beer.

“You know as well as I do that the reason I didn’t make the A-list was because of Kitty,” Angelica said.

“Her jealousy is not my—“

“No, it isn’t your fault, but she was right about us. At least for that weekend.”

Peter blinked a few times, looking back and forth between the two.

“You two…” he began.

“It’s not what you’re thinking, Pete.” Bobby said. “Not at all.”

“Yeah, not at all.” Angel shook her head. “The guy he was into apparently was not ready to dive completely off the gay deep end, so he dragged me into a… how did you put it? A trial-threesome?”

It was Peter’s turn to start choking, and he did so violently, rolling to his side. Bobby buried his face in his hands while Angelica plucked the beer from his hands, taking a smug drink from it.

“Turns out it was Bobby being played. He just wanted to bone the both of us.”

“You two have slept together?” Peter asked when he could.

“Oh, yes. Bobby knew I had a little crush on him, and used that to find out exactly how far the Cajun swung on to his side of the fence.” Angel finished the beer, then pointed the head of the bottle at Bobby. “Turns out you really didn’t need me at all.”

Bobby scoffed at her, “I didn’t hear you complaining!”

Angelica’s grin was one of memory and lust. “Oh no, not at all.”

Peter sat up right, between the two. “This is going well beyond my pay-grade.”

“Really?” Bobby asked. “I figured as the current boyfriend, you two had exchanged relevant histories by now.”

Peter shook his head. “It hasn’t really come up yet.”

“Peter has been avoiding it,” Angel said. “Completely.”

Peter shot her his best death look, to which Angel just smiled. There was something strange in her eye, a hunger that he’d only seen a few times. He couldn’t help but notice that the temperature in the room had also spiked.

“How many beers have you had?”

“Shut up,” Angelica said. “I don’t nag you about how much you drink, you don’t get to nag me about the one or two times I have too many.”

“That’s fair,” Bobby said.

Peter turned to shoot the same look at Bobby. “Traitor.”

“Look, Angel and I have done this a couple of times,” Bobby admitted. “And if I am catching her signals right, she wants to run the scam again right now.”

“Bobby!”

Bobby held up his hand as Peter’s jaw dropped. “But I respect you too much, Peter, to just run the play. You’d totally fall for it, by the way. You are about as secure in your sexuality as you are in those Walmart tights.”

“Dude, I’m not—“

“I didn’t say you were,” Bobby interrupted. “I am just saying that you’ve at least thought about batting for the away team a few times.”

Peter shook his head, more vehemently than he intended. Sure, he’d had the occasional thought, but nothing he would ever act upon. Who didn’t? But actually going through with one of those rare fantasies? It was not something he was even remotely comfortable with.

“Look, Pete, I am all about backing off. I don’t want to push you into anything,” Bobby said. “But your clearly interested in this.”

“No, man, I’m not. I promise, I’m not,” Peter protested.

“Really?” Angel said, moving up behind him and reaching around to put her hand over his crotch. “Explain why your little wall crawler is out on patrol.”

Peter looked down to Angel’s hand, where she firmly squeezed his fully erect member. He groaned a bit as she did, hands gripping the edge of the couch.

“It seems to me,” Angel said, whispering into his ear, “that your little friend here is more than a little curious.”

“Angelica,” Bobby said, his voice stern. “Not cool.”

Angelica sighed, making a sound that was half disgusted and half frustrated. It only enticed him further, and when she pulled her hand away, it took everything in him not to place it back.

“Thanks,” Peter said, trying to catch his breath.

“Like I said, I am not going to push you into anything. But if you ever want to experiment, I am totally up for it.” Bobby grinned and them fixed him with a pistol wink. “So to speak.”

Things grew uncomfortably silent for a moment as Peter settled back into the couch. Angelica helped herself to Peter’s beer while Bobby stood to go fish out another one. He sat there considering his options until Bobby returned.

“How,” he said, stammering at first and then taking a deep breath and steadying himself. “How would this work?”

Bobby grinned and handed him a beer across the coffee table, and Angel perked forward on the couch. “It only goes as far as you want. Touching, kissing, whatever. You give the safe word, it ends. No questions asked, no guilt, no arguing. It’s done.”

He then looked pointedly at Angelica. “Right?”

“Right!” She said. Peter could practically taste the excitement in her voice. “Never violate the sanctity of the safe word.”

“What’s the safe word?” Peter asked.

“Yours is your own.” Bobby said. “Anything you want it to be, but make it something that has nothing to do with sex or passion or anything like that. Something that you would never say during a thing. Mine is ‘Limbaugh.’”

“Nice,” Peter said.

“I picked ‘Shadowcat’ for mine,” Angel said.

He turned to look at Angel. “You have really got to let this go.”

Angel stuck her tongue out at him, then poked him in the ribs. “So pick one, already.”

Peter thought about it for a second, thinking of all the things he hated and all the enemies he faced. He thoughts about the battles, the depths of his divorce, and of the times he had been trapped, utterly at the mercy of whatever villain he was facing. Through it all, there had always been one driving force of frustration and pure evil that had haunted him since the earliest days of his crime-fighting career, the very epitome of all that was nasty and vile.

“JJJ,” Peter said. “My safe word is JJJ.”

Bobby slapped a hand over his mouth to stop from laughing, and Angelica squeezed him from behind. “That works. Nothing will drop me out of horny quicker than hearing his name.”

Peter glanced back over his shoulder, “You are way too into this.”

Angel grinned at him. “Guys fantasize about seeing women together all the time. We’re the same way. And you two? God damn, Peter, you’re both hot as fuck.”

Peter looked nervously to Bobby, who waved meekly.

“You’d be surprised how many women call me hot, all things considered.”

“It’s because you look like that kid from Smallville.”

Bobby looked confused. “Tom Welling?”

Peter shook his head. “No, the one that played Jimmy Olsen.”

Bobby rolled his eyes.

“Keep in mind, this means I owe you one,” Angel said into his ear, her breath heating up his entire neck. “And I have some pretty hot friends. Ever wonder how flexible Psylocke really is?”

Peter’s mind flashed with an image of the sexy purple-haired mutant. He’d never really had much contact with her, but he certainly had fantasized about her more than once.

“Really?”

Angel nipped at his ear while her hands came around his chest to untuck his shirt. “Oh yes. Betsy and I go way back, and I know she has a thing for bendable boys.”

Peter looked up to Bobby. For a chance at Psylocke, he could certainly give this a shot. “So, what do I do?”

Bobby considered for a moment, and then started undressing. Within moments, Bobby was naked in front of him. Peter could look away, his view blocked only long enough for Angel to finish pulling his shirt off. All thoughts of Psylocke fled his mind as he watched Bobby come over and sit by him.

“Last chance, Pete.” Bobby said. “You sure about this?”

Peter swallowed hard and nodded. Angela pulled his face around then to kiss him and he closed his eyes, bending back as she hungrily searched for his tongue. Her fingers ran across his chest, scratching along his collarbone and up to his neck. He felt a hand, cold, on his thigh and shivered. Angel’s other hand came around him at his waist, working at his pants.

Fear rushed through him as he felt Bobby help her with his pants, a moment of panic and realization as to what was happening. He broke the kiss, back stiffening as he felt the mixture of heat and cold through the fabric of his pants from their hands. He opened his mouth, ready to put a stop to it, but Angel kissed him and he felt the panic fade again. She was there, with him in this, and it gave him the calm to allow himself to accept this was something he wanted. Her hand reached in to his jeans and grabbed him by the shaft, the warm familiarity of her touch putting the fear back at ease. While she gently stroked him, he lifted his hips so Bobby could pull his pants off.

Angelica shifted out from behind him so that he laid back on the couch, and stood above him, both hands going behind her back. A second later, the cloth of her costume slumped and then fell off her shoulders. She slid the fabric down slowly until her breasts peeked out. She grinned at him, keeping eye contact before slowly sliding it off her hips. Peter stared up at her, lost in her beauty. He felt Bobby’s hand on his thigh and stiffened a little, glancing at his friend before looking back up to Angel. He put a hand on her knee and she brought her leg, placing it on the edge of the couch. He ran his fingers up her thigh and watched and she grabbed her breasts, teasing her nipples and parting her thighs a bit to give him access. Bobby’s hand matched Peter’s speed, moving in unison. The moment his fingers felt the heat and moisture pouring from Angel’s sex, he felt Bobby’s cold fingers wrap around the base of his cock.

“Jesus,” Peter said, closing his eyes. Angelica slid herself onto his fingers, two entering her easily, moaning loudly as she descended onto his digits. Bobby grabbed him firmly and began to stroke, and for the first time Peter relaxed into his friend’s touch. He kept his eyes on Angelica’s face, at how she watched what was unfolding beneath her, at the naked lust on her face. He felt Bobby’s other hand slide up his thigh and caress his balls, a film of cold over his fingertips. The surge of cold and heat spiked through his system like a bolt of electricity, and Peter nearly shot himself off right then. Bobby suddenly squeezed him, hard, and the pressure receded.

“Someone is getting a little excited,” he mused, moving his chest over Peter’s legs and positioning his head above his cock. Peter looked down again, suddenly uneasy. The head of his penis extended beyond Bobby’s hand, brushing against his chin. Bobby looked him dead in the eye and blew a breath of cold air over the head of his member. Peter shivered and went rigid again, bucking his hips into his friend’s hand. As good as it felt, something nervous and frightened screamed inside of him, almost drowned out by his need to have Bobby devour him.

“Here,” Angelica said, sliding off his fingers. She repositioned herself above, a knee on the couch on one side of his head while the other bent, lowering herself onto his face, her hands on his chest so she could watch what was about to happen. “Pay attention to this while I watch.”

Peter twisted his arms around her legs so he could get his fingers in, pulling her slick lips apart and tonguing his way up to the hard nub that was the center of her pleasure. Angelica shrieked in sudden pleasure as he flicked his tongue across her clit, trying to ignore the feeling of Bobby pumping him with one hand while massaging his nuts with the other. Angel pushed herself onto him, the tip of his nose dipping into her while the greedily tongued at her clit. Patterns began to form on the tip of his tongue, letters and numbers, all the more frantic as Peter felt his cock being positioned.

When Bobby slipped him into his mouth, the cold erupted through his system and he jerked his head back, twisting and biting into the flesh of Angel’s thigh while Bobby devoured him. Within seconds, he could feel the back of Bobby’s mouth. Angel pushed down hard on his thumb, positioned near her asshole, pressing on it while he screamed into the flesh of her thigh. Within moment, Bobby built a rhythm and noisily sucked on Peter’s cock. He twisted his head again and began to lap deep at Angel’s pussy, adding a finger and crooking it to hit the walls of her innermost pleasure.

Within moments, he could feel her thighs tighten and he fingers rake into his chest. She was riding his face hard, pushing back on the pad of his thumb hard enough that it had partially entered her.  Between the heat on his face and cold on his cock, Peter knew he was about to go off as well. He did his best to hold off the feeling, but as soon as Angela squeezed with all her might and began screaming, he exploded, sending his seed deep down Bobby’s throat.

He lost himself in a sea of legs and lips, kissing and touching every body part that floated within reach as the sexual haze descended over him. They drank some water and somehow made it into the bedroom. Peter watched for a moment from the foot of the bed while Angela sucked on Bobby, Drake’s head tossed back while his hand was planted firmly between Angel’s legs.

At some point, Angel’s eyes caught him and she pulled her head free, giving him a wicked grin.

“Do you want to take my place?”

Peter took a deep breath. Bobby looked down, and nodded slowly. Peter crawled up, face opposite from Angel’s, Bobby’s huge cock between them. He reached up and ran his fingers along the underside of the shaft, then grabbed it with a firm hand. It felt strange, foreign. Peter shook his head, not knowing where to start, what to do. He swallowed hard, looking up to Bobby.

“It’s okay, pal,” Bobby said, eyes and voice heavy with need. “You don’t have to do it.”

Peter felt Angel turn her head toward hers.

“Just kiss me,” she said, then tilted her head so that Bobby’s length ran along her lips. Peter nodded and leaned in. The second he felt Bobby’s cock on his lips, mixed with the soft heat of Angelica’s lips, he felt himself getting hard again. Their tongues fought around Bobby’s member to find each other, until finally Peter grabbed it by the base and position his head above.

“I don’t think I am ready for this part,” Peter admitted slowly. He felt horrible, like he was letting his friend down.

Bobby grabbed his head and turned his eyes to look at him. “In time, dude, if ever. Get Angel on all fours.”

“Yes!” Angelica shouted, nearly springing into position. Peter laid back against the head of the bed while Angel took his cock in her hand, and Bobby positioned himself behind her. Steam rose off his body, turning the bedroom into a sauna. Peter’s cock found its way into Angel’s mouth as Bobby pushed into her. Peter arched his back, the rhythm he was used to completely thrown off, instead dominated by each thrust Bobby made into her. Her grabbed her head with both hands, careful not to disrupt the wig, and pumped himself to meet her. He felt her begin to shudder again in orgasm, felt her mouth tighten and then her breath as she begged for Bobby to pound into her. The Iceman complied, and Angel engulfed him again, swallowing him in time to frantic pace the Bobby pounded her until her back arched and she shrieked around his cock.

After her orgasm subsided, she pulled her mouth of Peter and leaned back. Bobby still fucked her from behind, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, breasts jutting out and bouncing with the force of his thrusts. Peter looked up at the image, how beautiful and sexy they both were, the most erotic thing he’d ever seen in his life.

“All the way,” Angel said. “Peter’s thumb got me in the mood.”

“Are you sure?” Bobby asked and Angelica nodded. He pulled out of her and Angelica crawled up on top of Peter, grabbing his cock firmly with one hand and directing it into her. Her pussy was cold, colder than he could imagine it being, heating up slowly around him. He started to thrust but Angelica shook her head.

“Let Bobby set the rhythm,” she said, and then took a deep breath and gritted her teeth. From over her shoulder, Peter could see Bobby position himself behind her, hands at her ass. A moment later, he felt Bobby’s balls against his own. Angelica placed her hands on Peter’s chest, then grunted and dug her nails into his flesh as Bobby entered her from behind.

It was something that only happened in porn movies, but there it was, happening to him. Through the couple of inches of Angelica’s flesh that separated them, Peter could feel Bobby slowly sliding into her ass, his hard erection so close to his own. Peter’s eyes rolled back into his head as Angel’s body began to slide around him in response to Bobby’s thrusts. As Bobby fucked her ass, the speed never built to a point that Peter was in danger of orgasm, but slowly built him to a powerful plateau of constant pleasure as Angelica fucked him.

Time seemed to stop as Peter laid back and enjoyed himself, his only connection to the world the body on top of him and the sounds they were making. When Bobby came Angelica squeezed him tight, and Peter grabbed her hips to keep her tightly in place. Bobby fell to the side and Peter spun Angel onto her back, lifting one of her legs over his shoulder and burying himself as deep into her as he could. She opened her eyes and locked her gaze with his, whimpering and crying out his name as he pumped into her for all he was worth. He felt Bobby hand’s come between him, his thumb pressed hard against Angelica’s clit while Peter fucked her. The sound of her need and excitement pushed him further, and she peaked over into another orgasm, Peter exploded for the second time that night.

They ended up having to flip the mattress and fetch new sheets, the steam from Iceman and Firestar soaking what had been on the bed. In the end, they ended up with Angelica tucked between them, arms drifting across each other. Angel drifted off to sleep with her head buried in Peter’s chest while Bobby and Peter kept each other’s gaze, neither saying a word. As sleep finally reached out to claim him and Peter closed his eyes, he fell asleep knowing he had the most amazing friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a difficult chapter for me. I am a cis hetero-male who has had some bi experience, but very little. As such, I could only approach this from my own viewpoint. I specifically did not read other types of erotica with M/M or M/M/F combinations before hand as research on purpose — I want to see what my hand in it is unfettered and without using other writers as a jumping point for style. It's well out of my comfort zone, and that's exactly why I wanted to write it.
> 
> In the end, it isn't about how these people are sexually aligned or the sex they have, it is about the people they are. I hope I haven't completely screwed this up or offended anyone in the writing if I taken on to much with this scene. To me, it seemed a very natural destination resulting from some tension, some prodding, a bit of curiosity, and a lot of alcohol.


	13. The Bombastic Bag Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After donning a new costume and saving the day, Peter must contend with his ex-wife. But not everything is as it seems.

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Friday – July 3 rd, 2015 – 7:35 PM**

Peter flipped through the air, struggling to pull the stretchy blue pants over his legs before completing his spin. He managed to get the things on just in time, pulling them up with enough force to smash his sensitive spider-nards so hard that he screamed before spinning another webline.

“Frosty, I am not doing this! I am not going to fight crime like this, forget it!”

Laughter echoed through his earpiece. Across the early evening skyline, he could see smoke billowing from the waterfront. He released his line and spun in the air again, opening the sack and pulling free an oversized blue shirt.

“It’s all they had, Pete,” Bobby’s voice over the line. “Spider-Man costumes have been selling like hotcakes lately, so I had to go with what was available.”

Peter pulled on the shirt, twisting in the air to tug black gloves over his hands before landing on the top of a run-down brownstone. There we no boots in the bag, and he wasn’t going to wear his only decent pair of sneakers into a fire, so he kicked them off. He’d just have to go barefoot. He glanced around and caught his reflection in the mirror, of the blue jumpsuit with the giant “4” right in the center of the chest.

“Bobby, I can’t fight like this,” he said, upending the paper bag and shaking it. “There’s no mask, man. What am I supposed to do?”

An explosion echoed from the warehouse, followed by the sound of machine-gun fire and the call was suddenly dropped. Peter ran to the edge of the building, looking east to where he could see another plume of smoke rising into the air and the tell-tale flashes of light that could only be Angelica’s fire blasts.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Peter yelled, and then glanced at the paper bag in his hand.

“I’ll get you for this, Bobby,” he said while poking holes into the bag. “Mark my fucking words, you will rue this day.”

***

Peter landed on the roof of corner store in the Village, pulling the paper bag off his head before balling it up and throwing it as hard as he could. The thing sailed through the air before being caught on a gust of wind and spinning midair, spiraling in the breeze before returning and landing a few inches away from him.

Nothing drew camera crews like HYDRA, and it would figure that the one time he did battle with them would be while he was out of costume. Bobby was more than happy to handle the reporters though, telling them all about their fight and the bravery of their new friend.

“Bombastic Bag-Man,” Peter said, pulling the Fantastic Four tunic off and wadding it up. He was about to chuck it over the side of the building, then sighed and picked up the paper bag, placing the shirt within. He couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t need the uniform again before he could find a new Spidey costume.

“Wherever danger lurks, the Bombastic Bag-Man will be there,” he said, jumping up to the lip of the roof and stepping off. Wind rushed by him as he fell. “One day I will be replaced the Biodegradable Reusable Bag-Guy, but until then, Plain Old Brown Paper Bag-Man will save the day.”

He indulged himself and landed in the three-point superhero stance in the alley, then jogged across the street and up the path to MJ’s house. Luckily, MJ had called just as the reporters were taking notice of him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t happy Mary Jane. Even with the years that now separated them from being married, that tone still made him snap to attention and want to try and fix things.

He knocked on the door before letting himself in. Light spilled from the dining room down the hall, but the rest of the house was dark and empty. A mild buzzing began behind his temple as he closed the door, but that was to be expected. Mary Jane’s anger always triggered his spider-sense.

“MJ?” He called out, tossing the paper bag onto the couch and walking down the hall.

“In the kitchen,” he heard her reply. A kettle began to wail as he made his way down the hall, and he pushed open the swinging door into the kitchen to find MJ at the stove. She was dressed in a smart looking pantsuit, belted tightly to show off a still stunning figure, her red hair a jet of curls crawling down her back. Long buried memories of how many times he’d seen her from behind bled into him, of how many times his hand had pulled on that hair, tugging her head back so her could hear her moans all the better.

But that was a different Peter, a different life. A door closed that could not ever be opened again.

“What’s up?” He asked. “Where’s May?”

MJ glanced over her shoulder at him, her face neutral, though little frown lines had appeared in her forehead and threatened to form at the corners of her mouth. She seemed nervous, nervous and mad. Peter leaned against the wall, and looked down at his feet.

It was only then he noticed that he was still barefoot.

“She’s away, Peter,” Mary jane said while taking the kettle off the stove. She began opening cabinets until she found the one with cups in it. “Do you want tea?”

Peter made a face. “Are you kidding?

Mary Jane shook her head and then took bag from a bowl on the counter. “You don’t like tea. Right. I knew that.”

“Never could get a taste for it.” Peter said. “Coffee all the way. What’s this about? Is it something about tomorrow? I have a bead on some killer fireworks.”

She began sliding drawers open, eventually finding a spoon before opening the fridge and taking a half gallon of milk out of it. Peter watched her curiously. When they were together, she’d always taken her tea with sugar, but no milk. Just one more thing time had changed.

“May is with friends,” she said, spooning what he would have considered an excessive amount of sugar into her tea before topping it with milk. “Don’t worry about May.”

“I wasn’t. Should I be?” He asked. “You seem out of sorts.”

It was true. Mary Jane looked decidedly uncomfortable, like a stranger in her own home. She shook her head and sat down at the table, crossing her legs before hitting him with a level stare. Something in her eyes was hostile, but he found himself staring into them regardless. The green of her eyes had always enraptured him.

“I found something in John’s carry sack, and… well, I don’t know what it is.”

Peter arched an eyebrow. “John? Your husband, John?”

Mary Jane nodded, then reached for her purse across the table. “Come here, look at this.”

Peter stepped forward and felt another stab from his Spider Sense. It brought him up short, and he looked back over his shoulder. Something was wrong. His senses were tuned in on MJ, but there was something else as well.

“Is John here?” He asked, then turned to look at her again only to find Mary Jane holding a canister up to his face. Before he could say anything, she pulled the trigger, releasing a spray of aerosol mist. Peter inhaled the cloud and began to choke immediately, falling back and away from her.

MJ stepped forward as he reeled back, spraying him again with the can while using her free hand to lift a clear plastic respirator over her mouth and nose. His eyes watered so violently that he couldn’t see through them, and it felt like someone was choking him. He brought his hands to his throat as his legs buckled, the weight of his own body suddenly too much to bear.

“Oh, Parker,” MJ said above him, the mask giving her voice a strangely distorted sound. “This was entirely too easy.”

His body started to spasm, jerking him across the floor violently. He tried his best to cough the foul mist out while clawing his way to the door to get away. Before he could get there, it swung open and a helmeted figure stepped into the kitchen.

“Mysterio,” Peter choked, looking up and smooth dome. In its reflection, he could see himself, body twisted and shaking, his cheeks and neck covered in inky-black lines that looked like veins rising to the surface.

“Close, Parker,” Mysterio said, reaching up to his domed helmet. He twisted the ring at the neck and lifted it off to reveal the grinning face of Norman Osborn. “But no cigar. Not this time.”

Suddenly he was in the air, lifted one-handed as if he was a child by Osborn. MJ stood close by, but as Peter watched, the lines of her face melted, the color of her face fading away and replaced by pure white. Smiling, Chameleon reached up and pulled the red wig off his bald head before winking at Peter. Osborn spun him in midair so that their faces were only inches apart.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this,” Osborn said. “How many nights I sat there in my cell, planning for this very moment.”

Peter tried to get free, but even with both hands, he couldn’t break Osborn’s grip. His lungs felt like they were on fire, and Peter could feel his legs twitching in the grips of some kind of seizure. He tried to ask what Osborn had done to him, but all he could get out was a strangled squawk that only faintly resembled human speech.

Osborn laughed and spun, bending forward and launching Peter through the swinging door. His body upended and crashed back first into the wall of the hallway with enough force to crack it. Peter dropped to the ground, overcome with vertigo.

“When you took Harry from me,” Osborn continued, stepping into the hallway and grabbing him by the back of the shirt. “I thought for sure that I would be able to kill you, to use that anger to tear you apart. But you were always so quick, always so clever. And then, not content with just taking him from me, you turned Harry against me. I thought surely that would be the impetus I needed to take you down, once and for all.”

Osborn drug Peter down the hall as he talked, Chameleon falling in step behind them. Peter tried desperately to fight against Osborn’s strength, but his body refused to function. Dust burst from his skin, leaving a trail of dirt down the hall as Osborn dragged him.

“None of that mattered, though. None of it was enough to really get me motivated,” Norman said. He picked Peter up and slammed him into an easy chair in the living room, impacting with such force that the metal frame of the chair snapped and the overstuffed cushions popped, sending a spray of white stuffing into the air behind him.

“No, it was watching what became of you that did it.” Norman said. “The once mighty Spider-Man, reduced to a third-rate vigilante. A sad, pathetic waste of a headline that no one even bothered to remember anymore.” Norman looked down into his face, their eyes locked again. “I was always going to kill you. But with what you’d become? I am surprised you didn’t just kill yourself.”

“What did you do to me?” Peter asked, finally able to suck in a decent breath. He felt nauseous and dizzy, and his vision swam as he tried to keep focus on Osborn.

“You like?” Osborn asked. “All the years trying to recreate what happened to Rogers, trying to unlock the secret of the Super Soldier Serum only to find out there was something infinitely more powerful right below our feet. All those wasted resources, all those man hours… all those experiments that resulted in mutated freaks of nature like you.”

Peter tried to rise, but Osborn backhanded him hard. His jaw cracked from the impact, snapping his head so violently to the side that he could feel muscle tear. Peter collapsed into the chair again, his mouth filled with blood.

“No fidgeting, Parker,” Osborn said. “I don’t want you to miss this.”

Peter groaned and tried to lift his head again to look at Osborn. Suddenly ropes looped around his chest as Chameleon tied him firmly to the chair.

“The Super Soldier Serum was a fluke,” Osborn continued. “No matter how hard we tried, we could never recreate it correctly, never make another Steve Rogers. Only Banner and Conners ever had any real success. Curt’s brilliant idea to use strands of animal DNA to supplement missing strains in the serum created impressive results, and no one can doubt that the Hulk may just be the greatest weapon man ever invented. But none of them is a Rogers, is it?”

Osborn sat down on the couch opposite from him, pulling off the gloves of Mysterio’s costume.

“You gave them another dose of the serum?” Peter said, having to spit out blood to get the words out. “That’s what killed them?”

Osborn snorted. “Hardly. I just told you the serum was a dead end. Whatever Erskine did to make it work died with him. No, nature just showed me another path.”

Osborn reached into one of the pouches hanging off his belt, pulling free a darkly glinting crystal. It looked to be filled with smoke, rolling within the confines of its crystalline surface.

“What do you know about terrigenesis, Parker?”

Peter shook his head. He had heard some rumors, of course, of a new strain of mutants created by some alien technology.

“It’s a remarkable process,” Osborn said, slipping the crystal back into his pouch. “If you carry the right genetic strand, it can give you powers, powers just like the mutants. It’s almost like a genetic boost, bypassing millions of years of natural evolution and getting right to the point.”

“You mutated them?”

Osborn grinned and leaned forward. “I enhanced them. Between Rhino and Venom, I got a pretty damn good idea of what it would do to someone with the serum in their blood. I had to take a few extra readings though, which the Fantastic Four were nice enough to help with.”

“You. You killed them.” Peter shook his head. “No, that’s not possible. They are way out of your league, Osborn.”

“Maybe,” Osborn admitted. “But the assholes and degenerates in the Vault? Oh no, they are certainly in the right league. You know all about netowrking, Peter. If you didn’t want all of us to get wise to your heroic bullshit, you shouldn’t have locked us all up together.”

Chameleon laughed hard behind him, so loud that Osborn paused and gave him an irritated stare. Chameleon coughed nervously before going to the closet. He pulled a gas can from within and began to saturate the walls while Norman continued.

“No, I was able to find ways into the Baxter Building. You know Richards rents out office space there, right? Anyone that is committed to the betterment of mankind gets a steep discount… even if it is only of the self-help, motivational variety.”

Peter narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “Bullshit, there is no way- “

“Getting rid of the Avengers was the hard part,” Normal interrupted. “I mean, not as hard as dealing with the real Avengers would have been, not these third-generation kids that claim the title. Even still, all I had to do was keep them busy for a bit. Unlike you, they possess the resources to shut me down. Turns out that there has been some friction with the Carol Danvers and Scott Summers, lately. Ignite that a little bit and, not only were the Avengers taken care of, but the X-Men are also far too distracted to so much as glance at New York.”

“Well, you’ve had your bit, Norman,” Peter said. He could breathe again normally, his chest clearing of whatever he had inhaled. He flexed his fingers, making a fist with each hand. “But you let yourself ramble on too long again. When will bad guys ever learn not to-“

Peter’s words dropped off. He looked down to his arms, roped securely to the chair. Try as he might, he couldn’t break free. He grunted and pushed, straining with all his might but the rope held him firm.

“Something wrong, Peter?” Osborn asked, standing up.

Peter looked up as Norman approached, trying again in vain to free himself.

“You see, I wasn’t trying to send you through terrigenisis.” Osborn leaned over him, his face only inches away from Peter’s. “No, I put them through the process so I could study how it worked. All the research out there has concerned itself with is how terrigenesis takes the normal genetic code and turns into the Inhuman strand. But I went the other way. I wanted to know if you could reverse the process. So, I reverse-engineered terrigenesis until I got it just right. The first few batches went wrong. It didn’t just clean the genetic code, it obliterated it altogether. But for you? For you I got it just right.”

Peter spat every curse word he could think of, trying desperately to break free of the rope.

“Such language,” Osborn said before punching him in the face. Peter felt teeth break in his mouth and tasted snot and blood as his nose crushed flat against his skull. “I want you to know that I am going to enjoy every second of this.”

Norman rained down punch after punch as Chameleon spread gas throughout the house, taking a second and then third jerry can from the closet. Osborn didn’t keep the beating to his chest, though. He ripped the leg of a sitting chair and beat Peter with it, striking him in the chest, the legs, the abdomen. Twice he felt like he was going to pass out and twice Norman paused just long enough to revive him before starting the beating again.

“I want you to know that I am hardly done with you,” Norman said. Through blurry vision Peter could see the Chameleon hoist a rolled-up bundle of his shoulder, bringing it to near them. “Even after you’re dead, I am going to keep at it. One of the things I’ve had Oscorp at work on since I’ve been out is recreating the spiders that made you everything you are. And we’ve got them, Peter. We’ve got them.”

Chameleon dropped the bundle on the floor and unrolled it.

“No,” Peter whispered through mangled lips. She was smiling, her red hair framing a face that had turned sheet white. Only her eyes seemed amiss, the vibrant green replaced with the cloudy white of the dead.

“Do you know why I never exposed you, Peter?” Norman said, crouching down by Mary Jane’s body and looking up to him. “It’s because I never wanted the world to give Peter Parker the satisfaction of being a hero. When I was done with you, I wanted you to be forgotten. Tell the world who you are, and they’d mourn your loss. They’d name streets and high schools after you. And that is not something I can stand.”

Chameleon took a gun from his coat pocket and lifted it to Peter’s temple.

“No one will mourn a man that killed his ex-wife and child before killing himself, Peter.” Osborn said. “But don’t worry about the body upstairs, it’s from the morgue. May is perfectly safe. No, I have something special planned for her. I am going to do the same thing to you that you did to me with Harry.”

Peter tore his eyes from Mary Jane’s body to look at Norman, tears spilling from his swollen eyes.

“I am going to raise her to hate you, Peter. I am going to goblinize her, and I am going to turn her into the new goblin. And by the time I am done, she will cause more pain and slaughter than all of us that call you enemy have ever done combined. Your child won’t just be a villain. I will empower her and she will bring the whole fucking world to its knees.”

Osborn nodded to the Chameleon. “Good night, Peter Parker. Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

Peter tried to scream, but the blast of gunfire drowned him out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry it took so long to update this fic again.
> 
> A few months back, I was hospitalized, and it was bad. It was so bad, in fact, that I almost didn't come back out of the hospital. After I did get home, I spent time recovering, getting my life back together, and then the holidays... one thing after another. I am also getting the finishing touches on my next book, and that along with other projects (and video games) has taken a lot of my time away.
> 
> That being said, I don't want my first fan-fic here to be one of the many uncompleted works. "One Final Night" is almost done, the end is in sight, and I will see it done. So walk with me just a little farther and we'll cross that line. This is only the first work in my version of the Marvel Universe (which I call Earth-90210) and I hope to bring you stories of other characters in the future.
> 
> For now, though, thank you for taking this journey with me. Stick with me just a little longer and see what happens as Peter approaches his ultimate battle.


	14. Touched by an Angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brought back from the brink of death, Peter comes up with a bold plan.

**Chapter Fourteen**

**Sunday – July 5 th – 4:15 AM**

Spinning and falling and heat. He was burning, he was freezing, he was drowning. He was terrified.

Over twenty years of spinning webs and fighting criminals, Peter Parker had come close to death more than a few times – even crossed the line once or twice – but never had he felt so destroyed as he did now. He reached for nothingness, trying desperately to grab on to something, anything, but his fingers either never found purchase or burned away as he tumbled through an endless pit of nothing.

Through the eternity of overwhelming silence a brief light shattered the void. For a moment, a single instant in the eye of eternity, something broke the eternal nothing and touched him. For a moment, a shining winged being rose before him, radiant and majestic, and in that second, Peter breathed again.

The void spiraled away and he entered dreams, fitful dreams filled with burning houses and dead wives, where cancer ate at everyone he loved and an angel sat in the corner, his arm tied off with a rubber hose like some junkie in the Kitchen. Through it all the Beach Boys wished they all could be California Girls, the soundtrack of his oblivion. With each verse a new horror played out for him while the desiccated corpses of Aunt May and Uncle Ben pointed out all the mistakes he had made over his life.

And when they were done with their scolding, Gwen was there, asking why he had let her die. Before she could finish the question, Gwen had become MJ, and then back to Gwen again. With each word she wore a different face.

He came aware of his body groggily. He could hear two people talking softly too each other, their voices so muffled he couldn’t make them out over the sound of the Beach Boys over a radio. Someone was holding his hand. He lifted his head, expecting his body to either protest or fail altogether, but it didn’t. He felt fine.

Perfectly fine.

He lied on a hospital bed in one of the most technologically advanced rooms he’d ever been in, and considering that he had toured the Triskellion dozens of times and was friends with aliens, that impressed him more than a little. Angelica sat in a chair by his side, her head resting on the edge of his bed, still holding his hand in her sleep. Across the room, Bobby sat talking softly and playing cards with Warren Worthington, who wore nothing more than a pair of black sweatpants, his right arm bandaged from write to elbow. His wings, recently reverted to their angelic grace, were folded behind him, and flexed briefly as Warren excitedly threw a card down.

“Ten-point fireball to that bitch of a Shivan, motherfucker,” Warren said.

Bobby reached out to a couple of cards he had in play, then held up a single blue one from his hand. “You didn’t say mother may I.”

Warren cursed in a rather un-angelic way. Peter blinked a few times and shook his head, trying to clear separate his mind from the dreams. When he opened his eyes again, Angelica had lifted her head and was watching him with a smile.

“Pete,” she said softly before she was on him, crawling into his bed and kissing him softly. Peter wrapped his arms around her, and after the kiss was through, held her as tightly as he could, grateful for her presence and her warmth.

“Mary Jane,” he began, but Angelica shushed.

“We know, we know. I’m so sorry Peter,” she said. “She was dead when we pulled her out of the house, we didn’t get there in time to save her.”

Peter shook his head. “She was dead before I got there. Osborn and Kravinoff killed her. Angel, they’ve been playing us this whole time.”

A polite cough caused Peter to look up, where Bobby and Warren now stood on either side of his bed. Warren looked concerned, while Bobby was all smiles.

“They shot me,” Peter said.

Bobby nodded. “Yeah. I chilled your body we brought you back to the school pronto. Luckily, Warren wasn’t too far off. I don’t know that we got him here just in time, but if not, it was pretty close.”

“It’s gone, Bobby. They took it away.”

Angelica lifted her head off his chest. “What do you mean?”

“My powers,” Peter said. He could feel how weak he was, feel the absence of what had made him so special for the last two decades. “They’re gone, completely gone. They turned me into a flatscan again.”

Bobby looked to Warren, and Warren looked back at him confused.

“What?”

“Shouldn’t you explain why, now?” Bobby said, motioning at Peter. “You know, some science reason as to what the hell is going on?”

“How the hell should I know?” Warren said. “I’m not a fucking doctor, Bobby. My blood can heal people. I have no clue how it works or what it does. You want a doctor, get Jean or Hank in here.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Bobby said. “You are one of the most powerful healers in the world, and you don’t know how it works?”

Warren shrugged. “Blood goes in, bad stuff goes out?”

“This is a real Mickey Mouse organization we are running here, “ Bobby said. “It’s a good thing Charles is dead. He’d fucking die of a heart attack if he knew how seriously we were taking our gifts these days.”

“Go fuck yourself.” Warren said. “When your powers consist of something more complex than making snow cones for birthday parties, then you can bitch at me.”

“Terrigen,” Peter said, interrupting the X-Men. “Osbourne used some kind of terrigen mist on me, but instead of empowering me, it made me normal again.”

“Fuck,” Warren said, the tone in his voice impressed. “That shit changes DNA directly. If this Osbourne dude has worked that out, then technically there is nothing wrong with you. You don’t have the Spidey building-blocks anymore.”

“Dude, shut up!” Bobby said.

“What? It’s true. Isn’t it?”

Peter sighed and closed his eyes.

“Get out of here, both of you,” Angelica hissed at them. “Warren, thank you for everything, but both of you need to go now. Keep trying to raise the A-Team. Hell, get the B-Team if you can. Get out there and find anyone that can help us get all this back under control.”

Bobby put his hand on Peter’s shoulder as Warren walked off.

“Glad to see you alive, buddy,” Bobby said. “I thought for sure you were done for.”

“Bobby!” Angelica said, the temperature in the room suddenly spiking.

Peter reached up and squeezed Bobby’s hand. “Thanks, man.”

When they were alone in the room again, Angelica gave him another hug before sliding off the bed and returning to her chair. She sat uncomfortably, stretching and trying to work out the knots from her body. They were quiet for a moment, until a thought drifted across Peter’s mind and he sat bolt upright in bed.

“May!” He said, nearly shouting. “Angelica, they’ve got May!”

Angelica stood again, putting her hands on his chest and forcing him back down. “Settle down, Peter. Take a deep breath and tell me everything.

It came out disorganized, chaotic. By the time he was done telling her about Osborn and Chameleon, of Mary Jane’s body dumped on the floor, it seemed distant and remote, like something had happened to someone else that he was relating.

“How?” Angelica shook her head after hearing it all, pacing near the foot of his bed while. “How in the hell did Norman Osborn pull this off? This is just a bit out of his league, isn’t it? Checking the Avengers, killing the Fantastic Four? Do you think Harry had anything to do with it?”

Peter shook his head. “I doubt it. Aside from being an infomercial star, I think Harry is sincere about being reformed. We don’t talk or anything, but I know him. The Osborn Method may be a laugh, but he’s passionate about it. Harry always kept his heart on his sleeve. He can’t hide that kind of thing.”

“Why Mysterio, though? People fear the Green Goblin, even still. Mysterio has always been more of a joke than anything else. Why would he lower himself several rungs to do this?”

“For that exact reason,” Peter said. “If the Goblin was active again, people would move hell and high water to put him down.”

Angelica nodded. “And as Mysterio, no one took it serious enough to actually go after him.”

“Including us,” Peter said. “Even though they managed to kill Marko and the others, it was still just Mysterio. I mean, the man wears a fishbowl, for fuck’s sake.”

“What’s our next move, then? If he is serious about turning May into the next Green Goblin, he’ll need to goblinize her. He’ll have to keep her in a lab setting to make sure he can monitor her reaction to it. And since she’s so young, he can go slow… take his time and make sure this works.”

Peter closed his eyes. He knew that she was just trying to lay out the facts, but the clinical way she said it terrified him. This was his daughter, the only thing truly worthwhile he had ever been part of during his years on this planet. To think that Osborn was going to put that shit in her veins, that he was going to take that sweet little girl and twist her into something monstrous made him nauseous.

“I have to get to Oscorp,” Peter said, tossing the sheet aside and sitting up in the bed. There was no dizziness or pain, he felt fine. Whatever it was in Warren’s blood had done the trick.

“I really don’t think that is a good idea,” Angelica said, coming to his side and trying to push him back into the bed. “He would never keep her at one of his labs. He may have monologued you like a fool because he was sure he was killing you, but he had to at least consider that somehow your friends would be able to piece at least some of this together. He’s not going to keep her in the most obvious place.”

Peter shook his head and gently pushed her hands to the side, getting to his feet. “No, not for May. Norman said Oscorp had reactivated the spider-program. Somehow, he is still connected to, and likely controlling, the company. That means he’s got a new cluster of super-spiders hidden in those labs somewhere.”

She watched him for a moment and nodded. “And we already know how your DNA will react when exposed to their bite.”

“Exactly,” Peter said. “Whatever it is in my genetic make-up is rare, maybe one in several million will react the way I do. We just need to find which spider had the same modifications as the one that bit me twenty years ago, and let nature take its course.”

“There is no way I am going to talk you in to just letting Bobby and I handle this, is there?”

Peter shot her a flat look.

Angelica held her hands up. “It was worth asking. I can’t lose you, Pete. I understand you must do this, but the thought of losing you scares the hell out of me. So, I need you to make me a promise.”

“What?”

“We go in there, you let Bobby and I take the lead. You stay back, and you stay safe. No bullshit. You may be again, but for right now, you are not Spider-Man. Don’t get yourself killed before we get you webbed up again.”

Peter took a deep breath and nodded, the reached out and pulled Angelica into a close hug. She laid her head against his chest, and Peter wrapped his arms tightly around her. He closed his eyes and lost himself in the scent of her wig, the smell of which was still purely Angelica even if the hair was fake.

“Get Dairy Queen.” He said after a long moment. “It’s time to go fuck some shit up.”


	15. Quake Me Up (Before you Go-Go)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Iceman break into Hammer Industries facility looking for super-spiders. Featuring special guest Quake!

**Chapter Fifteen**

**Wednesday – July 8 th – 2:20 AM**

“I can’t move in this shit,” Peter said into his com.

Crouched behind the ledge of a five-story building across the street from a Hammer Industries satellite facility in The Bronx, Peter was decked from head to toe in riot gear pilfered from the recesses of the X-Mansion. Some of it was blistering new technology, fresh from the combined wet dreams of Forge and Beast, super-tech originally designed to help the soldiers out in the field. When social outcry turned against the X-Men once again, the Senate closed to books on any technology mutant-related, so until now, it sat untouched, filed away in the “Maybe Next Year” section of the X-Men’s extensive storerooms. Other bits were not so high-tech, however, consisting of rigid plates and hard packed Kevlar that not only made it difficult to move, but also made it unbearably hot. It was already July in New York. The weather didn’t need any help into him into a sweating cesspit of foul odors.

“Angel is back on active duty,” Bobby said into the com. “He got a call in from X-23 about the location of the A team, and is apparently needed. So deal with it, tough guy. You get your ass shot, it sticks this time.”

“Iceman’s right,” Firestar’s voice over the com. “And for the love of god, stay out of the way until we breach.”

Peter sighed and sat back on his ass, the lip of the ledge to his back. It was times like this that made him consider picking up smoking again. Never the most patient individual, the thought of getting his powers back where they belonged was causing him to nearly jump out of his skin. The last two days had been agony; everything required more effort, more energy expended to accomplish tasks with only half the result. The problem was that his reflexes hadn’t caught on that he was Spidey yet. Peter found himself trying to move in positions that his body simply couldn’t move in anymore, and had more than once needed Angelica or Bobby to get himself out of an unplanned case of doing the splits.

And the pickle jar. Fuck the pickle jar, and fuck Bobby for finding it so damn funny, also.

“Alright, floor twelve is dark,” Bobby said into the coms. “If all of this is right, that’s the quickest way to the private servers.”

Peter twisted and brought up the binoculars to his eyeline, counting the floors until he came to the twelfth. Sure enough, the cleaning crew had turned off the main lights before moving on to the next floor. It had taken a lot of favors to get their intelligence on the Hammer building, including bringing in the Inhuman turned Shield Agent Quake in to hack the company’s security server. Coulson had questions, not that he bothered to ask them, but the man had a way of making Peter spill all his secrets without having to bother with the interrogation. Peter had tried to play it cool, but showing up to the Triskelion in full assault gear had somehow tipped Agent Coulson off that something was up. In the end, Peter had to promise to set up an Amazon Echo system in Coulson’s apartment, and set up the entire smart-home network, for him not to tell Fury that Spider-Man was anything but amazing these days.

“Quake, do your thing,” Firestar said across the comm. “Let me know when we’re gold and I’ll make out entrance.”

“You got it, hot stuff.” Peter found that he liked Daisy. As far as SHIELD agents went, she was laid back and was a total geek. While she had been busy hacking the Hammer Gibson, he’d spent the time with her chatting about the latest gadgets and their mutual hatred of StarkCrap. “You should be good to go now.”

From somewhere above the night sky, Firestar’s aura flared into existence briefly. “Get ready, Webs.”

Peter crawled up onto the lip of the building as the aura coalesced into a single column of microwave-based flames, striking the side of the building and melting a circular hole into the glass. A gust of cold caused his breath to mist, and Peter stepped off the edge of the building just as Bobby formed an ice bridge between his location and the hole. Peter slid along the ramp at breakneck speed while Firestar dutifully melted it behind him.

“You’ve got about fifteen minutes, Webs,” Quake said into the com. “If you can’t get that uplink to the cluster, then I’ve got no way to find out where they are hiding the payload.”

Peter slid off the ramp and sailed through the air, trying to roll before he hit the carpeted floor, but ending up hitting with his ass and tumbling until he hit a counter.

“Dude, are you alright?” Bobby asked as he came through the opening. His ice form melted off him, leaving him a black and silver-lined X-Men costume under a dark overcoat.

Peter picked himself off the floor and leaned over the counter, holding his rioting back with one hand. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know about this,” Bobby said into the com. “Webs looks hurt.”

“I’m fine,” Peter insisted. “Besides, you don’t know how to operate this equipment and Angelica’s aura could fuck up the electronics in the cluster.”

“You know I don’t mind going in,” Quake said.

“And she can’t go either, because damn it, I am Spider-Man and I said so.”

Bobby rolled his eyes, and offered his hand. “Need some help, old man?”

Peter smacked the offered hand away and forced himself to stand up straight, trying to ignore the pops as his back gave protest. “I’m fine, damn it.”

“Not to be a bitch, “Quake said, “but tick-tock and all.”

Peter pulled a patch of velcroid material off his forearm, revealing the flexible face of a mini-tablet built into the armor. An app with the layout of the facility was already loaded, using their coms in lieu of GPS to track their location. He pinched and expanded the view with his free hand, setting a directional indicator to their destination before pointing.

“That way,” he said, then fell behind as Bobby took the lead. They moved through hallways at his direction, with Bobby freezing the locks of closed doors and breaking them to give them entrance. Within a few minutes, they came to the clear plexi-glass doors of the central server cluster for the labs, a private network that was simply inaccessible from outside the building.

“What’s our time like?” Bobby asked, placing his hands on the electronic panel of the door. Icy tendrils of mist seeped from his skin, and ice crystals quickly grew over the panel.

Peter checked the display at the top of the tablet. “Six in, about nine until go-time”

Bobby nodded, then jerked his hands away from the panel as it began to crackle with little bursts of static electricity.

“I’d still love to know how Osborn got his fingers into this company,” Iceman said as the locks disengaged. Together, they forced them to part. “You would think Justin Hammer would have people watching for that sort of thing.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Peter said, stepping into the server cluster. “I would guess Chameleon had something to do with it, though. Still, it’s a good thing Marko told me about Hammer gearing everyone out. If this is really where Otto used to work out of, it has to be the right place.”

Iceman crouched by the door and watched the hall while Peter approached the rows of servers, looking for the central hub. “I am just finding it hard to believe Norm was able to pull all this off.”

Peter slipped a box from his satchel, setting it on a bench by the hub and extending the antenna on the back of the router before he began connecting it to the ports of the computer. “He’s been sidelined so long, no one expected anything like this out of him. Hell, we’re lucky all he did was take out the FF and Avengers with all the time he’s had to plan. When you take persistent and free time and multiply it by crazy, there is no telling what you can come up with. We might have been looking at thirty-foot sentient robot Goblins or President Osborn or some shit.”

“I guess so,” Iceman said. “I mean, if Trump can do it, why not Osborn?”

“Honestly, I think I’d prefer Norman to the Cheeto-in-Chief.” Peter said before booting up the system. Without any controls, the box simply hummed to work, a few lights blinking on the display to show it was connecting.

“I’m getting the feed now, “Quake said over the earpiece. It’s going to take a few minutes, though.”

“What’s out time like?” Peter asked.

“Eight-ish minutes.”

Peter crouched by the machine, willing it work faster. He and Bobby settled into silence, waiting for the all-clear.

“Alright, running into a problem here,” Quake said after a few minutes. “There’s a security alert up.”

“How?” Peter asked. “What did we trigger?”

“Not you guys. This has been running for a day or two. I am tracing it back to source to find out what it is looking for.”

“Is it really that important?” Iceman asked. “I mean, shouldn’t we be focused on the spiders?”

“That’s running auto,” Quake said. “This gives me something to do until it finishes, and besides, this alert is attached to the same data clusters that I am searching.”

“Meaning?”

The com remained silent for a long time.

“Quake?” Peter asked.

“One moment, please,” Quake’s voice came back, sounding a little too excited for Peter’s liking.

“Fuck, get ready Bobby,” Peter said. Bobby nodded and his ice-skin grew back into place.

The doors to the inner facility suddenly slid open as people in riot-gear stormed into the hall. Bobby raised his hands, releasing streams of frozen air between himself and the assault squad. Ice crystals formed rapidly over the corridor, growing to more than an inch thick before Peter could even blink. The security team scream in surprise, some sliding across the floor while others fell on their back. The sounds of automatic gunfire filled the air as one squeezed the trigger of his weapon, releasing a stream of bullets into the ceiling.

“I think a security team was dispatched,” Quake said into the com, her voice frantic. “Still trying to get past the security lockout. Something definitely—“

“Not a good time,” Peter said into the com while Daisy continued, but what she said was lost in a torrent of gunfire. Peter ducked his head between his legs and tried to keep low while Bobby shot streams of ice at the security team. Bullets struck the walls around him, some peppering off the clusters of computer servers. Peter cursed and pulled a canister from his belt, pulling the pin and throwing it down the hall with all his might.

“Snowflake, night-night!” he screamed before covering his face.

Iceman shut his eyes tight and turned away as the flashbang grenade detonated. Unlike the relatively minor glare produced by normal means, these Forge-enhanced explosives were so bright Peter could see his eyelids even with his hands covering his face, and a high pierced screech like none he’d ever experienced sent him directly into a deep sense of vertigo. Seconds after the explosion, an extreme blast of cold nearly froze Peter to the bone, and he blinked his eyes clear to see that Bobby had iced the hallway to such an extreme that the men within were trapped waist-deep in ice, their weapons completely coated. Holes allowed the men that had fallen to breath, but none of them would be moving soon.

“I can’t believe it,” Iceman yelled, but Peter could barely hear him over the ringing in his ears. “Forge managed to bottle Banshee’s scream.”

“Quake,” Peter screamed, unable to even really hear himself all that well. “Report!”

“You’re not going to like this, Webs,” she said. “All the spiders are gone.”

“What?”

“They were destroyed this morning after a security breach yesterday,” came her voice. “The entire lab was scuttled.”

“What do you mean, what kind of breach?”

“There’s an employee that broke in and stole two or three of the spiders. That’s what the alert was about. According to the file, the guy is believed to be some kind of industrial spy working for Advanced Idea Mechanics.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Bobby said. “So this was a waste of time?”

“Sorry guys, I don’t know what to say.”

“What did they do about the spy?” Peter asked, disconnecting the box from the server. “Did they catch him?”

“No,” Quake answered. “They’re following him, and I think they’ve dispatched a team to pick him up.”

“Who is he?” Peter asked. “Maybe we can get to him before they do.”

“Some guy named Abner… oh, shit.”

“What?” Firestar’s voice now. “What is it?”

“I recognize this guy. He’s a pro.”

“Who is it?” Peter asked before running over to Bobby and tapping him on the shoulder. Together they made their way down the hall, Bobby banishing the ice as the past. The security guards fell to the floor, alive but too cold to do more than shiver and huddle on the floor.

“He was going by Abner Washington here at Hammer, but it’s a cover. His name is Aaron Davis, goes by the handle Prowler. We tried to recruit him to SHIELD a couple of times, but we couldn’t match the pay he gets on the free market.” Quake said. “He’s got a place up in Spanish Harlem. The Hammer security team has already been to the apartment they had on file from his cover, and found it empty. If he’s still in the city, he’s probably hiding out at his own place… and I think they are on the way as well.”

As they made their way to the melted window, Iceman tossed his hands out and formed a sled. Peter grabbed onto his waist and stepped on behind him.

“To Harlem!” Peter said. “Big tip if you can get me there before the gun-wielding corporate security squad does.”

Bobby glanced back over his shoulder. “You are enjoying this.”

Peter couldn’t help but grin. “So much.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a few more chapters to go. The final night is rapidly approaching!


	16. Miles Away From Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter Parker and his Amazing Friends track down the Prowler.

**Chapter Sixteen**

**Wednesday – July 8 th – 3:08 AM**

Peter raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time while Firestar ran behind him. He wanted to vault up the landings, every reflex in his body urging him to do what it simply wasn’t capable of anymore. By the time he made it to the third floor he was already out of breath. It was sheer willpower, spite, and fear of what Osbourne was doing to his daughter that saw him up to the fifth.

At the top of the stairs he tried to catch his wind again, doubling over and holding a finger up to Firestar. She didn’t look winded at all. That irritated him.

“Anything?” he said into his com after he finally caught his breath.

“All clear on the roof,” Iceman responded. “Just the usual late-night crap.”

“Satellite is clear,” Quake added over the com.

They made their way to apartment 503. Peter pressed his ear against the door but couldn’t hear anything inside.

“My hearing is shit,” he said.

“You could just try knocking,” Firestar said. “You know, see if anyone is home. Like a normal person.”

“Why? Why much you take the fun out of everything?”

She blinked a couple of times in thought. “I am trying my damndest to come up with something clever to say.”

Peter considered. “Maybe something about it being your job once I started porking you? Or something about karma and consequence?”

Firestar knocked on the door, shaking her head. “This is why you and Bobby work so well together. The two of you are natural banterers.”

They waited for a moment before Peter shrugged and stepped back, lifting his foot. Firestar stepped to the side to give him room, and Peter kicked the lock with all his might. Pain shot through his foot, resonating up to his knee. He yelped and fell to the ground, holding his leg. Firestar slapped a hand to her mouth to cover the laugh about to burst free until holes ripped through the door, bullets flying over Peter’s body.

“Fuck!” he yelled, rolling out of the way as Firestar lit her aura, extending a hand and burning the door away. Peter pulled himself to his feet as the fire alarm started to ring. Inside the apartment, someone yelled but he couldn’t make out the words over the sound of the alarm and the gunfire and Iceman screaming in his ear.

Firestar threw her hands forward, teeth gritted as her corona flared brightly. A wave of heat so intense that it nearly took Peter to his knees ripped through the hallway. Bullets turned to streaks of molten metal and then vaporized altogether before they could get near the empowered mutant. Peter did fall to his knees, the very air burning his throat.

“Angelica!” he said, though he wasn’t sure he could make any noise. The world spun around him, his vision blurring as vertigo consumed him.

Cool air washed over him, and he sat upright. He lied on his back in a modestly furnished living room. Iceman stood over him with Firestar off to the side, both hands over her face, staring at him. Behind them, an African man looked over from kneeling by a couch, his hands on a covered figure lying there.

“I am so sorry,” Firestar said, her voice shaky. Peter waved his hand at her, but still felt a more than a little weak.

“I’m fine,” he said. It took Iceman to help him off the floor, and even still he wavered as he got to his feet. He took a few breaths and steadied himself, them forced a smile to Firestar. “Seriously, I’m fine.”

The man at the couch watched him nervously, his right eye badly swollen and both lip and nose streaked with blood. Peter could just make out the face of a dark-skinned teenager on the couch, his face steaked with sweat and twisted in pain.

“You’re Davis?” Peter asked.

The man looked to Iceman, then back to Peter and nodded. “I’m sorry for shooting at you. They’ve been on me all day.”

“Who is that?” Peter asked, pointing at the boy.

“His nephew,” Firestar said, stepping to him and taking his hand. Peter gratefully put his arm around her, hoping it how heavily he had to lean on her showed.

“You keep your nephew in your safehouse! What in the hell is wrong with you?”

Davis looked up from the boy angrily. “This isn’t my safehouse! They got those already. This is my home.”

“So, what is he—”

“His dad,” Davis interrupted, taking a cloth from a bowl at the floor and wiping the boy’s forehead. “My brother. He’s usually a good man, but he… sometimes he drinks. When shit gets tough, Miles comes here to hide out. He was here when I got here.”

“What happened?” Peter asked, his tone softening considerably.

“I don’t know,” Davis said. The concern and worry in his voice was intense. It reminded Peter of the same fear and concern he felt for May at that moment. “I didn’t notice him here at first. I was on the phone with my…”

Peter frowned as Davis’ voice trailed off. The man looked back to them, clearly unsure of how to explain.

“With the person that hired you,” Peter said. “Look, we’ve all been through this with hoods before. Just spill it.”

David nodded. “Anyway, I heard a crash from in here and found Miles laid out on the floor. While I was on the phone he’d gone through my bag, found the case inside of it. He must have dropped it or something.”

“Fuck!” Peter said, stepping over to the couch and dropping to his knees. “One of them bit him?”

“One of them?” Davis asked. “One of them was all I could get. But yeah, it got him on the neck.”

“Is it dead?”

The man looked up at him. “Is it dead? Look at what it did to Miles!”

Peter nodded and separated from Firestar, getting on his knees next to Davis. “I know, I get that, but is the spider still alive?”

Davis shook his head. “Just a smear on Miles’ hand.”

Peter looked the kid over, turning his head to the side. A massive red welt rose from his neck, with what looked like sheet white veins extending from the wound for a good inch in any direction in the kid’s skin.

“We have got to get him out here. If this turns south, he is going to need every doctor Coulson can scrape up on short notice.”

“Quake, did you get that?” Angelica asked, touching the com in her ear.

“Roger-roger,” came the reply. “Call is in, there should be a team dispatched momentarily. Get him to the roof for an air-lift.”

“What’s going to happen to him?” Davis asked.

Peter shook his head. “I don’t know, but chances are, nothing good. That spider bite is probably going to kill him.”

Davis fell back on his ass, face stricken.

“There’s a chance, though,” Peter said quickly. “He might be one of the rare people this isn’t going to fuck up. And if he isn’t, he’s going to have the best medical care in the world. So, take a breath. Nothing is written yet.”

The man got to his knees again, resting his forehead on the boy, sobbing. “I am so sorry, Miles. I never meant this to happen.”

Peter stood up. “There is not time for that. Frosty, help him get the boy to the roof.”

Iceman nodded, then closed his eyes for a moment. The ice skin melted away to reveal Bobby beneath, who gently took Davis by the elbow and guided him up. Davis picked the boy up and Bobby led him out. Peter stepped over to the window of the apartment, looking out at the skyline. He could see Firestar’s reflection in the glass step over to him and remove her mask.

“What does this mean?” she asked.

Peter shook his head. “It means I am shit out of luck.”

“There’s no other way?”

Peter punched the window. The day before, his strength would have shattered it. Now the pressurized glass might as well be vibranium. “No. Not if that was the last of the spiders.”

“What do we do?”

“We?” Peter asked. He put both hands against the glass, nearly collapsing against it. His strength was gone, and the reality of the situation threatened to take him to his knees again. “We don’t do anything. I’m just a flatscan now.”

“Peter—”

“This is all on up to you guys now. It’s over for me. I’m… I’m…” Peter said, closing his eyes. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream.

“I am Spider-Man no more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going to finish this. That this has gone unfinished this long is wrong, and I apologize. There are only three more chapters. Stick with me just a little longer and the next fic I do will be finished in a more timely manner.


	17. Introducing the New Spider-Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the Triskellion, two plans are set into motion.

**Chapter Seventeen:**

**Wednesday – July 8 th – 4:15 AM**

Peter leaned his head against the surface of a glass wall overlooking the river. All he wanted to do was close his eyes and let sleep take him. But if he let his mind drift for even a moment…

The sound of May’s scream snapped him awake again. Peter stared hard at the skyline, at the lights of the buildings of the sleeping city not too distant. The sun would be up soon, and the entire city would come awake, another day moving without anyone knowing.

Without anyone caring.

Peter closed his eyes, pressing his forehead on the glass until a cool hand nudged him. He snapped his eyes open again. The face of Bobby Drake reflected back at him in the glass, his features grim and concerned. It was a look Peter hated having leveled at him, a look of sympathy for someone helpless.

“What’s happening, Frosty?” he said, trying his best to sound casual.

“The kid’s pulling through,” Bobby said, his words coming out measured and careful. “His body is accepting whatever the serum is doing to him.”

“Another one-in-a-million, huh?” Peter shook his head and cracked his back. “How does Osbourne do that? He spends billions on a super-juice he can’t inject into anyone only to have random chance plop it right into the veins of someone that it works with. That’s so uncanny, it could be an X-Man.”

Bobby’s brow furrowed as he worked his way through that. “Really? That’s the best you got.”

“It’s been a long night. Any clue as to what it is doing to him?”

“There’s some doctor, a biochemist I think, who explained it all to me. Tried to explain it to me, anyway. Then some other guy took over the explaining part, but he kept going off on tangents. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“Sorry about them,” Coulson’s voice said as he stepped closer to the pair. “Really, they’re brilliant. Put them together and they could solve all the world’s problems, if they could agree on where to start. They get a little excitable.”

Peter turned around and put his back to the wall. “They’re the best? They’re smart enough to figure out what’s up with the kid?”

“What, you want credentials?” Phil said. “They both hold more degrees than I have hair, and I am pretty sure Fitz actually read the entire text of the iTunes user agreement. Yeah, they’re good. And if they say the kid is going to be fine, he’s probably already on his way to having an angst-ridden episode that leads to an insightful yet heart-warming adventure.”

“Is he all spidery?”

“Spidery…” Coulson considered for a moment, then pulled out his StarkPhone and spoke into it. “Jarvis, add spidery to my list of favorite adverbs.”

“Phil!” Peter could normally handle Coulson’s personality. With all things happening right now, though, it was all he could do to stop himself from putting Coulson through the glass wall behind him.

Coulson put his phone away. “It’s a great word, in a horrific hairy-legged death and doom sort of way. The good news is that Mr. Morales is going to survive, and we’re going to both take care of him and recruit his uncle.”

“Prowler?” Bobby said.

Coulson nodded. “It appears Mr. Davis would like some sort of reprieve from the numerous felonies he’s committed, and he’s talented.”

“And Osbourne?” Peter asked.

Coulson shook his head. “Nothing. I’m sorry Peter. We can’t find him.”

Peter turned and looked back out across the river. Something nagged at him, something in the recess of his brain that his mind refused to let go. He took a deep breath. If he could distract himself from it, not pick it too deep, he was sure it would come to him. That’s how he worked, why the banter worked so well for him. It distracted his brain enough so that it could get down to business without his thoughts messing it the entire process up.

“When this is over, and May is safe,” he said, “I can help out with the kid. Show him the ropes. Teach about how with great power comes—“

“Don’t,” Bobby said forcefully. “Don’t fucking say it. I know you’re fucked up in a bad way, but I swear to God Pete, don’t fucking say it.”

Peter shot Bobby a dark look when Angelica ran into the room, a look of excitement on her face.

“Felicia!” she said, a little breathless. Everyone stared at her for a moment, so she repeated the name. “Felicia Hardy!”

“Peter Petruski!” Coulson said. “Hey, this is fun. Whatever other B-list criminal alter egos can we name?”

“Fred Dukes,” Bobby said.

“What?” Angelica shook her head. “No, no. Listen—“

“Jackson Wheele,” Peter said.

“Good one!” Bobby said, putting his fist up. Peter bumped it with a nod.

Angelica took a deep breath, then look confused. “Jackson Wheele?”

Peter shook his head. “You don’t want to know. Seriously.”

“Anyway, we have to find Felicia.”

“Why?” Peter said. “And how? If she doesn’t want to be found, we’re going to start stepping on banana peels the second we start looking for her.”

“Because the Osbourne fixed her, right?” Firestar said. “He made her young again. If anyone in the city knows where the Six are based, it’s her.”

Peter blinked a few times then threw his arms around her. “You are fucking amazing.”

Angelica grinned. “Thanks for noticing.”

Peter considered. “That doesn’t help us track her down, though. If she’s gone to ground, then there is no telling where she is.”

Firestar shook her head. “I might be able to find her. Remember, we used to work together. I know a lot of her old bolt-holes, places that she goes to when she needs to go low. Also, I know the places she likes to frequent when she’s feeling frisky. If she got her youth back, chances are she is indulging herself to some extreme. You know how much she loves attention.”

Peter nodded, then blinked as his mind worked out what had been itching at him the entire night. He looked over to Bobby for a moment, then back to Angelica.

“Do you think you can handle her alone?”

“What?” Angelica asked. “Why?”

“Bobby and I have something we need to take care of.”

“We do?” Bobby said, looking confused.

Peter turned and walked back to the window, looking out over the city. The horizon was just starting to light as a new day dawned.

“Yes. Yes, we do.”

***

“You can’t be serious.”

Peter glanced over at Iceman, standing next to him on the roof of the building. Below them, the streets were blocked off, under the constant presence of agents from Damage Control, directing the flow of traffic around the area and making sure no selfie-seeking enthusiasts got too close. Even here, hundreds of feet from the center of the area and in the full light of the sun, ice crystals had formed over the building, coating it in an icy skin that reflected back the morning sun.

“I know this is a bad idea,” Peter said. “I know how stupid this is. Fuck, if anyone knows how stupid this is, it’s me. I’ve actually written Livejournal poetry about how bad of an idea this is.”

“Really? You still use LJ?”

“Yeah, and MySpace. Fuck Zuck,” Peter said. “I need you to do this for me, man. I can’t be sidelined for this shit.”

Bobby turned and looked at him. Peter could already see the ‘no’ on his face, at how set and against this he was. Even through the ice-skin, Bobby couldn’t hide his emotions. It was one of the most endearing things about him.

“Bobby, she’s my daughter. She is my greatest responsibility,” he said. Bobby started to say something, but Peter held up his finger. “I need my greatest power to do this.”

Bobby took a deep breath, a mix of anger and fear clearly etched in the ice. “And when it’s over? When May is safe?”

Peter looked down at the street below. “I really haven’t gotten that far yet, Bobby.”

“Not good enough. I need to know what you’re going to do when this is done with.”

Peter took a deep breath. “I’ll give it up. I am sure Fury has someone at SHIELD that can figure it out. And, you know… maybe it’s time to hang up the tights anyway. Remember how we were talking about this new generation of asswipes taking over for us?”

Bobby nodded.

“Well, there is a brand-new Spider-Man just lying in a bed at the Triskellion. Can you think of anyone more qualified to train him?”

“At least six,” Iceman said. “And that’s just off the top of my head. Hell, give him a can of silly string, and I am pretty sure Colonel Sanders could do a better job.”

Peter laughed. “Asshole.”

They were silent for a moment while Peter allowed Bobby the time to think it all over.

“You’re sure about this?”

“No,” Peter admitted. “Not even a little bit. But fuck, man. What else can I do? No one knows Osbourne like I do. No one has fought him as many times I have. I am the best bet to see this through, but I can’t do it as a flatscan.”

Iceman extended his hand and formed a ramp from the building edge down to the massive block of ice on the street below.

“There is absolutely no way you can measure how much you owe me for this, Pete,” Bobby said, extending his hand. Peter accepted the help on to the sled.

“I know, man.” He held on tight while Bobby took them to just above the block. The Iceman extended his hand, and the super-frozen surface began to crack.

“All you, Pete. Good luck.”

Peter looked down. The ice continued to shatter, cracking and falling apart, rivers of steam releasing into the morning sun. In the frozen center, an inky black pool began to ripple and writhe. With a deep breath, Peter moved to the edge of the sled, stepping off and dropping the few feet into the mess below. It reacted instantly, tendrils shooting up from the surface and seizing his arms while the mass flowed over his legs. Peter screamed into the air as it lifted him off the ground, the symbiote flowing over him until it entered his mouth and cut off his scream altogether. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only two more to go. The Final Night is upon us.


	18. Back in Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter deals with the results of two decisions and proves how far he is willing to go.

**Chapter Eighteen**

**Wednesday – July 8 th – 6:17 AM**

As it turned out, hell was cold.

Peter knelt naked in the middle of a white expanse, holding himself for warmth, doubled over and shivering in a way that only addicts going clean could understand. He lifted his head and looked around, but there was nothing to be found, nothing to be seen. No angles or corners for his mind to latch on to, nothing to give him any orientation whatsoever.

_We have you, Parker!_

The voice overwhelmed him, so loud it felt like his head might split open. He clamped his hands hard over his ears, as much to keep the sound out as to make sure that it didn’t crack open. When it faded, Peter opened his eyes again and looked up. Grey shapes rose from nothingness, slowly taking form around him, towering over him and staring at him balefully. Uncle Ben, Aunt May, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy and Otto Octavius stood next to newcomers Ben Grimm, Flint Marko, and Eddie Brock.

_You are ours! Your torment shall be—_

“Oh, fuck off!” Peter yelled, lifting his head and glaring at the apparitions. They turned and looked at each other, confused.

“Yeah, you heard me,” he said, getting to his feet. “I don’t have time for this shit! I don’t have time for your threats, I don’t have time for your monologue, and I sure as shit don’t have time for your harrowing visions of my past, no matter how intricately designed they are. So, cut the shit!”

The figures stepped back as one as if stung, before melting away into an inky black pool. From the pool rose a copy of himself, glossy and black.

“You’re mad,” the doppelganger said. “You’re mad at me.”

Peter took a deep, calming breath. “No, I’m not mad at you. There is just a hell of a lot going on right now.”

“You are mine, Parker! I have you!” His dark reflection stepped forward, puffing up with confidence. “I shall make you pay—”

Peter slapped him. The symbiote jumped back, holding his wounded cheek.

“I said cut the shit! You didn’t capture me, you glorified pudding pop. I came to you.”

“You came to me?” The symbiote said. “But I have hunted you, tracked you!”

“And you came up short, goopy.” Peter took another deep breath, forcing himself to calm a bit. “I need you.”

Again, the symbiote reflection of himself looked surprised.

Peter took a step toward the being. “My powers have been taken from me, by Brock’s friends.”

The symbiote almost hissed. “Brock had no friends. No one liked him.”

“Yeah, I can see that. I just assumed that, you know, an asshole joins the asshole club…”

The symbiote shook its head. “No, they hated him. They wouldn’t even invite him to dart night. Sergei said he smelled like old turnips. It wounded Brock. His desire for pitchers of beer and cheaply priced buffalo wings was limitless! He swore vengeance upon them, them and their shirts and their Hooters cards.”

“Damn, Eddie.” Peter said, feeling sorry for the man. “You really couldn’t catch a break, could you?”

The symbiote growled. “All that mattered to Brock was revenge. We had harmony! We had communion! We were—”

“Enough!” Peter shouted. “Stop getting yourself all worked up. I need you to bond with me again. I need to be Spider-Man again.”

“You wish… unity?”

Peter nodded. “So fucking help me, yeah. I do. You’re the only way I get my mojo back, and I need it.”

The symbiote stared at him for a moment, then stepped back.

“This is a trick. You wish my destruction, Parker!”

Peter motioned around. “What are you talking about? You are in my head, damn it! You can see that I’m not lying!”

The symbiote considered. Peter wondered if he looked that idiotic when he was deep in thought but knew somewhere deep down that he did.

“Bond with me,” Peter said, pressing on. “I accept your terms. I know what will happen if the bond is ever broken. Come back to me. We can be one again.”

Peter saw the look cross the symbiotes face, the look of longing and need. It had always wanted him, ever since he’d torn the symbiote away in that bell tower all those years ago. It had come after him out of anger and revenge, but for some reason, the symbiote desired him more than anything else.

“Help me,” he said, extending his hand. “Help me save my daughter. Be Spider-Man once more.”

The symbiote started to reach forward, then stopped.

“You will never put me aside again,” the symbiote said. “We will be united. To remove me is to die.”

“I know,” Peter said. “I know.”

The symbiote reached out and took his hand. Peter closed his eyes, feeling the hand loose form and flow up his arm, flowing over his body and surrounding him. When he opened them again, he stood in the center of the broken ice, his arms covered in the inky void of the symbiote. He looked down at himself, at the glossy black that covered everything save for the white spider across his chest.

“Fuck me,” Iceman said, standing a few feet away.

“No time,” Peter said, then raised his arm and flicked a web to the nearest building. “We got an ass to kick.”

***

When the call came later that night, Peter was ready. He raced through the city like a man possessed, letting himself bend and twist, flipping into every release of his webs and spinning with each new line he let fly. The symbiote had not only restored his powers but had given him the strength and vitality of his youth again, infusing his body with health like he hadn’t felt in decades. He could feel it inside him, resting just beyond his conscious, for now content to let him be in control. He wasn’t sure how long that would last, but he was grateful that it wasn’t trying to take control just yet. If he could put a word on it, Peter thought that the symbiote actually felt happy.

His released his last web, arching high into the sky and rolling into a crouch before landing on the roof of the Flatiron Building, where Firestar waited for him. She stared at him for a moment before stepping forward and slipping her arms around his waist.

“I know it’s an evil alien organism and all, “she said, “but you look fucking hot in that thing.”

With a second’s concentration his mask melted away, and he kissed her gently. “Can’t hear that enough.”

“Are you alright? Is it… fucking with you?”

Peter shook his head. “No. I think it’s glad to be back, honestly.”

Firestar nodded. “I guess that’s another bridge for another time.”

“Yeah. Can’t wait to jump off it. Where’s the Cat?”

“Right here,” Felicia said, stepping out of the deeper shadows. Her face was one of open admiration as she approached, going so far as to even lick her lips as she stepped close. “I agree with my Angel. You do look good.”

Peter shook his head. “Unbelievable. You never stop, do you?”

Felicia’s smile was radiant. “Never. And I always get my way, Spider. You know that.”

Peter looked to Firestar, who turned to Felicia like she was going to slap her. He grabbed her wrist before she could raise her hand, even though there was nothing more that he would love to see than Firestar lay Black Cat out on her ass.

“Angel,” Peter said, “let it go.”

Firestar took a deep breath and nodded. “Tell him, Felicia.”

“You’re not the only one after me, Spider,” Black Cat said, crossing her arms under her breasts in a way that stretched the fabric of her costume so tight they almost fell out. In the recesses of his mind, he could feel the symbiote taking notice, attracted by his own desires. “Normie wants to cage me also. He’s been looking for me all week.”

“He’s tying up loose ends,” Peter said. “Making sure no one knows where he is.”

“Oh, I let him tie me up,” Felicia said with a purr. “That didn’t cost him any extra. But I don’t like cages no matter how loose my end is.”

Peter choked, and Angelica rolled her eyes. “Really, Felicia? Do you really have to ham it up? You sound like your dialogue is written by some sexually repressed man who thinks this is what sexy is. Knock it off.”

Felicia frowned at Angelica, then sighed. “Fine.”

“Appreciate it,” Angelica said, then looked at Peter. “She’ll tell us where the base is as long as we give her protection, and once this over, get her out of the city. Apparently, things have gotten a little hot for her over the last week.”

“And I mean released when you get me out,” Felicia said. “Not trips to the Vault or the Raft or anything. No tricks.”

Peter nodded. “I am sure we can arrange that.”

Felicia grinned. “And I want some alone time with you.”

“What?” Peter and Angelica said in unison.

“A girl has her needs,” Felicia said. “And I need my Spider back, if only for a night.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Peter said.

“That was never part of the deal,” Angelica hissed at Felicia, then looked to Peter. “I swear that was never part of the deal. She sprung this on me.”

Peter grabbed Felicia by the shoulders in both hands. She stiffened in his grasp, wincing in pain. Peter relaxed his grip but kept firm hold of her.

“Careful, Spider. Hurt me too much and I might just forget where—”

“This is really easy, Cat,” Peter said, his mask sliding back into place. His voice sounded strange, tinged with the voice of the symbiote. “You are going to tell me where my daughter is, or I am going to jump off this building. We are going to fall toward the ground, and then I am going to throw you into the pavement before saving myself. I am going to throw you so hard, should you land on your feet, you’ll be able to see them before your fucking head cracks open on the street.”

“What?” She said, twisting harder in his grip. He held on tighter, anger rising within him, stronger than he’d ever felt. He picked her up and stepped to the side of the building.

“Peter!” Angelica said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“What I should have done with this rapist piece of crap a long time ago,” Peter said, shrugging her hand off. Felicia fought hard against him now as he stepped up on the lip of the building.

“Angel!” She said, voice raised in fear. “Angel, get him off me!”

“Stay back! This little kitty is about to run out of lives.” He held Felicia out over the building edge and glanced back to Angelica. “What is it everyone says these days?”

“Peter!” Firestar screamed behind him.

“Oh yeah,” he said, then put his face in close to his prisoner and whispered. “Bye Felicia.”

She screamed as he stepped off the ledge, pulling her in close and holding on so she couldn’t use any of he gadgets or tricks to escape. She fought against him with everything she had, scraping at him with her claws and kicking and kneeing desperately. The street came closer and closer, and true to his word, Peter pulled her from his body, ready to throw her into the pavement.

“A tanker! He’s on an old tanker near the bridge!” Felicia screamed.

Peter twisted and flipped a webline into the sky. Their descent suddenly halted as the bungee effect took over, though Felicia’s face came within a few feet of the pavement before they ricocheted back into the sky. She screamed as they arced back over the edge of the building, and Peter dropped her at Firestar’s feet.

“Get that bitch into a SHIELD cell,” he said. Firestar knelt, gathering up the weeping mess that was the Black Cat in her arms. “If what she told me is a lie, I want to know exactly where to find her.”

“Okay, Peter,” Firestar said. He could hear the fear in her voice, see the disbelief in her eyes. It didn’t matter. She could be angry or scared or mad or anything that she wanted. Norman Osbourne had taken his child. That was all that mattered.

Peter cracked his knuckles before slamming his fist into his palm.

“He will die for what he did to me.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter remains. It's a long one, so it may take a bit to get out.


	19. One Final Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Final Night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two major character deaths. Lots of violence.

**Chapter Nineteen:**

Fire raged from the ruins of a house. It wasn’t just the house, though. The trees, the poles for the power lines, the fence separating one home from another—all of it burned.

With what little strength remained him, Peter lifted a twisted and mangled panel off his chest and tossed it to the side. He didn’t know if it was his own strength or the symbiote that allowed him to do it. He supposed it didn’t really matter. He twisted his head left and right. Wreckage from the helicopter lied around him within the impact crater. Beyond that, a house burned.

Sirens. That’s what he was hearing. Sirens and water, like a busted hydrant or something. A lot of water, but not flowing. Gushing. Water gushing into the air.

“Peter?”

The voice came from somewhere that he couldn’t see, somewhere that he could barely hear. He put a hand to his forehead, trying to shake some sense into it. His fingers brushed something wet and thick in his hair. Nothing made any sense. Who was calling him now? At this hour? He pulled his hand back to find it covered in something shiny and red.

“Peter!” Firestar stood above him, her mask down. Peter tried to smile to her, but even that felt like too much.

**Wednesday – July 8 th – 9:15 PM**

“I am going to rip her head off and hold her spine up in the air,” Peter said, mimicking a squeezing motion with his fingers. After a moment of fantasizing, he looked curiously over to Bobby. “That isn’t trademarked or anything, is it? I know you snowmen have called dibs on all sorts of weird things.”

Iceman looked up from where he had been staring at the harbor. He had full days growth of beard and his hair looked untouched, completely out of character for someone as appearance conscious as Bobby. Peter understood, though. It had been a hard couple of days for them all.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The spine-rip thing,” he said. “MK1?”

Bobby shook his head. “I can barely understand you with that thing on.”

Peter concentrated and forced the symbiote off his face.

“Those too,” Bobby said, pointing at his hands. “Those are freaking me out a bit.”

Peter rolled his eyes and forced the talons back into more normal looking fingers.

“Picky, picky.”

“Yeah, I don’t like you being turned into some murder-monkey for an insatiable alien goop monster,” Bobby said. “I’m weird like that.”

“I’m not the symbiote’s bitch. I have total control.”

Peter didn’t have to look at his friend. He could feel the cold stare he was getting. It helped that the temperature dropped noticeably when it started.

“So, you wanted to kill Black Cat. That’s you now. That’s what you do?”

Peter shook his head. “I was never going to kill her. Not like, a lot, anyway.”

“Oh, just a little! Dead around the edges but still juicy inside?”

“No,” Peter shook his head, “I mean I didn’t want to kill her a lot. A little, yeah. But that’s because of what—”

“Hey, I get it. She fucked you up. You have every reason to be murder-happy when it comes to her.”

Peter smiled. “Thank you for saying it. Where’s the but?”

“But,” Bobby continued, “you are Peter-fucking-Parker. You are better than that.”

“Yeah, I’ve been better than that for a long time,” he said. “See where it’s gotten me?”

“An amazing daughter, loyal friends, and the respect, love, and admiration of an entire city?”

“That’s Spider-Man’s shit,” Peter said. “No one gives a rat’s ass about Parker.”

“No, that last thing was Spidey-centric. The first two were totally Peter. The parts you ignored.”

Peter looked back to his friend, but the fierce look on Bobby’s face killed the words in his mouth.

“You do this shit,” Bobby said. “And it pisses me off. You think everyone has it down on Peter, that everyone is there just to kick him when he’s down. But it’s bullshit. It’s you feeling sorry for yourself. It always has been. For whatever reason, you can’t accept that Peter-fucking-Parker is worthy of respect, is worthy of being someone people can put their faith in. So, you sabotage your shit.”

Peter rolled his eyes and looked back to the tanker. “Fuck you.”

“No, fuck you, Peter,” Bobby said fiercely. “You are a genius, a board-certified honest to Amway, actually have the paper-work to prove it genius. But instead of doing some genius level shit, you are helping douchebags set up surround sound for their spoiled-ass hipster offspring. You could have pursued photography. For fuck sake, Pete, you could have been Spider-Manning professionally. I know Coulson wanted you on the Avengers. I heard Tony even made you a suit.”

“Don’t get me started on that thing,” Peter said. “The last thing the world needs is iSpider.”

Bobby sighed. “There you go. Make a big joke out of all of it.”

“Why not?” Peter shot back. “My life is a fucking joke, Bobby. If you haven’t noticed, this shit isn’t—”

“Enough!” Bobby almost screamed. “Enough bullshit, Pete! Your life is like it is because you think you should be punished. It’s the same shit now as it was when we were kids, you are doing the same damn thing. And you need to get some help with it. Clearly you are not capable of handling it alone. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you Pete, I really am. I should have been there for you. But I am sick of listening to you bitch and moan about how bad your life is when you put yourself there.”

Peter willed the mask of the symbiote back over his face.

“Yeah,” Bobby said before sighing. “I figured that’s about what you’d say.”

They stood in silence, watching the dark freighter for nearly an hour before the door opened behind them. Firestar, with a dark overcoat over her costume, walked on to the rooftop with Quake right behind her. The shield agent wore a simple pair of jeans and a leather biker jacket, not even bothering with a mask. Only her gloves, shot through with bits of metal and high-tech looking doodads, seemed even slightly out of place. In one hand she carried a thick plastic case.

“We have intercept teams all around,” she said as they approached. “All flatscan assets, but you know, best we could do on short notice. Hooter hasn’t found the Avengers yet.”

“Hooter?” Bobby asked.

“It’s what she calls the original Hawkeye,” Firestar said. She kept her distance from Peter, keeping both Iceman and Quake between them. “Don’t even ask why.”

“Because he spends nearly every waking moment at Hooters?” Bobby said.

“Right?” Quake put down the case and began motioning enthusiastically with her hands. “It’s like, hello, we can have team meetings somewhere else. And wakes? Who ever heard of having a wake at a fucking Hooters? I love the guy, really, but he needs to get over boobs and wings.”

“Have you met Bobbi?” Peter asked. “She is all boobs and wings.”

Everyone turned to stare at him.

“Because she’s stacked,” Peter said, making boob motions with his hands. “And her code name is Mockingbird. You know. Birds. Wings.”

“Jesus, Spidey, we don’t need the visual.”

Peter looked down. To help demonstrate the point, the symbiote had given him breasts.

“Holy shit!” Peter said, poking one. “Why does that feel so real?”

“Seriously?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah, seriously. I swear I can feel that.”

“No, as in ‘seriously, right now?’ Can you tuck that shit away?” Bobby said. “We sort of have something going on.”

Peter concentrated, and the breasts slid back into his chest. “Alright, but I am not done exploring this.”

“I don’t know if I should be jealous or not,” Firestar said. “That was just weird.”

“Guys!” Bobby said, clapping his hands together. “Focus!”

Quake laid her case out on top of an air-conditioning unit, opening it up and extending several antennas. From within, she produced a foot-long black cylinder with a rounded top before tossing it at Peter. He flipped a web to it, snatching it out of the air.

“Up high, please?” She said while unfolding paper-thin computer monitors from within the case, setting up an entire SHIELD workstation. Peter jumped from the warehouse and snagged one of the loading cranes dockside, swinging up to the upper extension and setting the adhesive side of the tube to the steel frame.

When he landed on the roof again, Quake was already in the middle of laying out the plan.

“That’s pretty much all they are going to be good for, and Fury is insistent on this being as casualty free as possible. So, that’s the bad news. Don’t get into any shit you can’t handle because they are only good for crowd control,” she said. Then she turned and motioned at her computer. “The good news is that, once I can acquire the carrier wave, I can take over any Hammer-crap they might be stockpiling. All that shit has shutdown codes hardwired into it. Hammer is scared shitless someone will turn his junk against him.”

“Fucking hell,” Peter said. “That’s how Tony and Rhodey kept kicking the crap out of hundreds of Hammerdrones at a time. Those cheating bastards have the shutdown codes!”

Quake grinned. “And somehow Hammer never figures it out.”

“Smartest dumb-ass in the world,” Peter shook his head and looked back down at the tanker. “So, we’re good to go then? Finally?”

“Yeah, sorry Webs. Fury wanted to make sure everything was copasetic on the perimeter before we start kicking doors in with the level of kaboomery on deck.”

“It’s all good,” Peter said, rolling his shoulder and then cracking his neck. He pointed a taloned finger at the freighter. “This is how we are going to do this. Firestar, I need to streak the crap out of the deck, light that thing up like redneck at a book burning. Frosty, while she’s getting them to come out and look, freeze that boat in place. I don’t it trying to skip town with all the evidence. How long will that take you?”

Bobby considered. “A few minutes, six tops.”

Peter nodded and pointed at the wheelhouse. “Do you think you can hit up there also, Firestar?”

She nodded, leaning over the side of the warehouse. “Yeah. I can make it part of my scorch run in. If we’re freezing it, why worry, though?”

“Communications,” Peter answered. “If there is any backup, I don’t want them radioing it in.”

Firestar and Iceman both nodded.

“Once Red hits them, those holds are going to open and whatever Norman’s got in there is going to come out. I’d expect a lot of Stark knock-offs. It should be able safe for you to trash without worrying about killing people. All that shit is computer controlled. As soon as they open, I am going in. You guys keep them tied up and engaged up top while I get in there and find Norman.”

“You mean May?” Bobby asked.

“She’ll be with him,” Peter said. “Find him, find her.”

“Yeah, but she’s the focus, right? You’re here to rescue her, not get Norman.”

Bobby shrieked in surprise as Peter grabbed him and lifted him off the ground with one hand.

“I am sick of this shit, Bobby!” he said. “Drop the fucking attitude and get in gear or go the fuck home! There is too much going on for me to be dealing with your thinly veiled bullshit.”

“Peter!” Firestar said, grabbing his free arm before he could punch Bobby. Iceman’s frozen skin slid into place, but Peter kept his fingers tight on his neck, the ice encasing his hand. Bobby’s face looked desperate as he struggled for air.

“You will obey me!” Peter hissed.

“Peter, he can’t breathe!” Firestar said, trying to pull him away. “Let him go!”

Peter wanted to squeeze, he wanted to squeeze until Bobby’s frozen head popped off and little bits of frozen blood shot out his neck like some fucked up Pez dispenser. He might have done it until the flash of heat from behind cause the symbiote to scream in terror. Peter dropped Iceman, his fingers breaking free of the ice, holding his head and backing away from his friends.

“Stop it!” He said, fighting to control his anger. It was like wading into the ocean, waves of it rocking across him internally, threatening to pull him under. Within the white expanse, he could hear the symbiote screaming in frustration. “Stop it! Stop it!”

Relief came as the symbiote shrieked and dispersed for a moment. Peter was thrown to the ground as the black liquid flowed over him again. Quake stood over him, both hands pointed at him. Peter held up a hand.

“I’ve got it!” he said quickly. “I’ve got it locked away again.”

“Are you sure?” Quake asked. “If you are lying to me Webs—”

“I’ve got it!” he said, hopping to his feet. “Jesus, Bobby, are you—”

“I’ll be fine,” Iceman interrupted. His voice was strained and full of anger. “Keep that fucking thing down, or so help me Pete, I will freeze you solid inside of it.”

Peter nodded. “We need to get this done quick. It is stronger than I thought.”

“It’s had a few years to practice,” Firestar said. She started to reach out to him, then pulled back. Peter let her shy away, trying to not be hurt by her refusal to touch him.

“Let’s go,” he said, trying to keep a lid on all his emotions. “Hit it, Red.”

***

He could see his hand holding hers, but it didn’t feel real. It felt just as distant as the sirens, as distant as the houses burning and collapsing. It couldn’t be her holding his hand. She was dead. He had seen her body, stiff and lifeless. Just lying there.

Then the smell of echinacea filled his senses and he closed his eyes and smiled.

“Angelica,” he said. “Angelica Jones.”

“I’m here Peter,” she said. Her fingers brushed his cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”

When he opened his eyes again, he could see Aunt May and Uncle Ben standing just over her shoulder. They looked good together. He smiled up to Angelica and marveled once more at the lines of her face, at the way her lip curled slightly upward. Tears flowed down her cheeks and he reached up to brush one away.

“They’re happy, Angel,” he said. “Uncle Ben and Aunt May. They look good.”

***

Peter sprang from the shoulders of a Hammerdrone, using to anchor himself so he could drive both fists into the torso of the one above. It exploded in a shower of sparks and machinery, but before he was even through the cloud, he had attached a webline to the one he’d sprang from and another to the robot on the right. Pulling the anchored line taught, he used his momentum and strength to rip the other from the air and arc it directly into the anchor below. They collided with a satisfying crunch as he flipped forward and clung to the side of a cargo container.

It pissed him off that these weren’t even particularly good Hammerdrones. This had to be one of the initial runs based off the Iron Legion, before the engineers of the Hammertech knockoffs had put some effort into it. Maybe this was all that Normie could afford.

“Firestar, hit it again,” he said into the com. “Melt these motherfuckers! I’m going below.”

Firestar ignited over the river, circling in a wide arc away from the freighter before rushing toward it again from the starboard side.  The closer she got the brighter she got, until Peter had to hold up his hand against the intensity of the aura descending upon them. He dove through an open hatch into the hold, tucking into a roll and dropping onto a metal catwalk before bounding over the rail and clinging to the side of the tanker’s hull. Firestar’s flyby was so bright that, even within, he had to cover his eyes and he could hear the symbiote screaming in anger and pain as heat washed over him.

“Fool!”

Peter only had seconds to move, springing to the call of his restored spider-sense just as an explosion scorched the wall he had been clinging to. He twisted in the air, dodging two more pumpkin bombs before landing in a low crouch on the floor below. This part of the hold had been converted into a workspace and sectioned off into rooms, but in the center of the platform, Norman Osborn stood in his Mysterio gear, holding pumpkin bombs in each hand. Beside him, the milky white face of Chameleon stared at him, an assault rifle raised to his shoulder.

“Last call, Osborn,” Peter said. “You and your boyfriend get one last ass kicking and then its time to settle up your tab.”

“Oh, we are settling alright, Parker,” Osborn said, throwing another pumpkin bomb. Peter sprang into the air as Chameleon opened fire, expecting that exact move. Peter twisted in midair, spinning two weblines—one for the rifle, and one for the second pumpkin bomb Osborn released. He corckscrewed in midair, the rifle ripped free of Chameleon’s grasp just as Peter sent the bomb directly at the pasty-faced villain. It exploded on impact, sending the man flying while Peter clung to the underside of the catwalk.

“No more playing with kiddie-gloves, Norman,” Peter said, watching the look of surprise on Osborn’s face. “Tonight, we are playing for keeps.”

“About time, Parker,” Osborn said, but instead of rushing forward, he sprang back to the fallen Chameleon. Peter leaped after him but couldn’t close the distance before Osborn produced an injector and stabbed it into Chameleon’s neck.

The effect was instantaneous. Chameleon sprang to his feet, screaming, bent over and hugging himself. His clothes ripped free as his body twisted and ripped open, engorged masses of muscle reshaping and redefining the man that once was.

“Osborn!” Chameleon screamed before his voice was lost, turning into a furious roar. Like a pasty white and naked version of the Hulk, the man that had been Chameleon roared in fury and slammed his enormous fists into the deck. The entire ship shook with the force of the impact. Behind Chameleon, Osborn ran through the hatch of one of the rooms.

“Spider!” Chameleon screamed and rushed him. Peter reached for the air, planning to leap-frog the man and go after Osborn, but before he could clear the giant, Chameleon grabbed his foot and ripped him from the air. The world spun, and pain rocked through him as Chameleon slammed him from side to side, smashing him into the deck over and over before dropping him.

“Puny Spider,” Chameleon said, lifting both fists in the air. Dazed, Peter barely had time to register them descending upon him before rolling out of the way. He tried to gain his feet, but Chameleon him and suddenly Peter was flying. He sailed out of the hold, through one of the hatches and into the night sky, rising more than a hundred feet off the deck of the ship. As he began to fall back to the planet, the pasty form of Chameleon came rushing toward him in the air.

Or more importantly, his fist did.

The punch sent Peter back into the sky. He might have landed in the river, or even New Jersey, had it not been for Iceman catching him mid-air.

“What the hell is the Hulk doing here?” Iceman said. Peter could barely muster enough sanity to attach a webline to his friend and hold tight as they raced along his sled.

“Chameleon,” he tried to explain. “Osborn hulked him!”

As they raced back to the cargo ship, Peter could see Firestar swooping to engage the enraged Chameleon, who was busily pulling apart Hammerdrones on ship. She hit him with a blast of fire, flying in a tight circle around him only to blast him again. Chameleon screamed in anger and pain before picking up a cargo trailer and swinging it like a baseball bat.

“Shit!” Peter said, jumping onto Iceman’s shoulders and springing clear, using the momentum to carry him close enough to web the container before slamming his feet into the side of the freighter. The webline snapped, but it slowed the swing enough the Firestar was able to dodge under it in time. The Chameleon roared in rage, but his scream was cut short as Iceman sent torrents of ice directly into his face. The beast stumbled back, bringing up his hands to try and block the attack.

“Quake,” Peter said, “We’ve got a mini-Hulk problem.”

“Roger that,” came back Quake’s calm voice. “Deploying a Hulkbuster. ETA three minutes.”

Iceman flew as a cargo container impacted with him. Peter barely had time to spin a web and snatch him out of the air.

“Any chance you can speed that up?” He swung Bobby up into the air and arced back to the ship as Iceman formed a new ice sled.

“Not really something we have constantly ready to go,” Quake said. “Be glad we have this one on standby as is.”

Peter jumped high as another container crashed into the ship where he had been clinging. “Hurry!”

“Could you stop screaming into the com with your Venom voice? It’s fucking creepy, man.”

Peter let out a frustrated scream, dodging two more containers before Firestar distracted him with a blast of fire. Peter ran along the length of the second container while it was in flight, springing off and attaching one webline to Chameleon’s shoulder and another to the back of his head. He used the shoulder line to yank himself to the monstrosity with incredible speed.

“Hey Dimitri!” he screamed as he drew close, yanking on the head line so the beast turned to look at him. “Sit the fuck down!”

His first impacted with Chameleon’s jaw with the force of a freight train. The Chameleon lifted off the deck as Peter spun away, crashing into a stack of cargo containers face first.

“Booyah!” Peter said, landing on his feet and doing a little victory dance. Too late, he felt the tingle of his spider-sense, followed shortly by Chameleon’s fist knocking him flying again. Bobby caught him in mid-flight, returning the favor.

“Seriously? Dancing?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter said. “But did you see that punch? That was “sock-ol’-Hitler-in-the-jaw level!”

Iceman shook his head. “Yeah, I’m sure Cap will give you a medal.”

“He is the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan,” Peter said then jumped off the sled, intent on getting back to Chameleon. Before he could, something lifted from one of freighter’s hatches. Standing atop a glider, the grinning face of the Green Goblin rose into the sky.

In one hand, the he held May.

“Let’s finish that game, Parker!” Osborn said before shooting into the sky. Peter could hear her scream even over Osborn’s laugh.

“May!” Peter yelled, desperately trying to catch the glider with a web. It stuck, but as it drug Peter into the sky, he could already feel it starting to give.

“I’m going after Osborn!” he said into the comm.

“Go!” Firestar’s voice said in return. “We’ll take care of this asshole and catch up.”

The tingle caused him to move, throwing his weight to the left and then right, barely in time to dodge the pumpkin bombs. Osborn’s laugh raced through the air, and again the webline jerked, almost completely dislodged. Peter brought up his free hand and shot another line just as the one the pulled him snapped. The line arced through the air but snapped short just before it would have hit. Peter twisted in the air and fell, the river rushing at him.

***

There were more people around now. He wasn’t in the crater anymore, someone had picked him up and carried him to the street. His head was in Angelica’s lap. Overhead, he could see Bobby, Mary Jane, and Gwen staring down at him. He smiled.

“This is weird. Bobby is all old but MJ is still a kid,” he said to Angelica.

“Shhh,” she said in return, brushing his hair. “Don’t talk, sweetie. Help is on the way. You’re going to be just fine.”

“I love you,” he said. “It should have been you I married. I should have followed you to Westchester. I should have gone after you.”

Angelica smiled. “We weren’t ready yet, Pete. You know that. Besides, you wouldn’t have ever had May if you had done that.”

Peter nodded and closed his eyes. Her lap was so comfortable, and he was so tired. But Angelica rocked him, forcing him to open his eyes again. She said something about him needing to stay awake, but her words were hard to hear, hard to concentrate on.

“I was never the father she deserved,” he said. “I loved her just as much as that father. I thought about her just as much, tried just as hard. I just wasn’t as good as it as he is. John Jameson’s been good to her. She loves him. Loves him so much. But he’s dead too, isn’t he?”

Angelica nodded. “Yeah, he is Peter.”

“I bet Bobby would be a good dad,” he looked down. Bobby knelt beside him, holding his hand. “You would, you now. Better than me.”

“Don’t say that, Pete,” Bobby’s voice was nearly a whisper. “You’re a great dad.”

Peter smiled. It was nice to hear that.

***

The SHEILD chopper came into range just in time. His shoulder ripped out of the socket as his webline snapped him into an arc and Peter screamed, but the pain couldn’t stop him. He flew in an arc at speed bordering on insanity, releasing and the momentum carry him through the air toward the bridge. He could see Osborn on top already. He tagged the bridge and arced himself up, landing on one of the gables.

Osborn held May at arm’s length, dangling her over the edge of the bridge.

Peter took a step forward, holding his injured shoulder with hand. “Norman, don’t you dare—”

“Careful with the threats, Peter,” the Goblin said, taking a step toward the edge. “I understand it isn’t wise to taunt crazy people.”

“You’re not crazy, Norman,” Peter said. “Just fucking evil.”

“Not true. I’ve got all sorts of paper-work proclaiming me nuts.” The Goblin mask slid back, revealing the face of Norman Osborne. “Should we put it to the test? Find out how crazy I am?”

“I am going to rip that smile off your face, Osborne.”

Norman arched an eyebrow. “That’s hardly clever, and not at all infuriating. Is that you talking in there, Venom?”

Peter jumped forward, launching himself across the distance with ease. Shock barely had time to register across Osborn face before Peter punched him as hard as he could. The Goblin fell back, letting go of May as momentum spun him around. Peter jumped over the side of the bridge after the girl, tagging her with a webline and pulling her in close before twisting and grabbing the bridge with another one. May wrapped her arms around his neck and hung on desperately as Peter landed on the bridge.

Bystanders surrounded him, many out of their cars with phones extended, trying to capture the action above. Peter looked up as woosh echoed from above. He could see the flame trail of the glider, already arcing around and descending to come after him.

“Over here, Spider-Man!”

Peter looked over to see the open door of a city bus, the driver motioning at him desperately. A man jumped off the bus from within, running toward him.

“We’ll take the kid,” the man said, reaching out. “Go get the Goblin.”

Peter looked back over the river. The glider was starting to return.

“SHIELD should be all over this bridge in a minute,” he said, handing May off to the stranger. “Get her to them. Tell them it’s my daughter.”

“Holy shit,” the man said, holding May close. Peter reached out and stroked her cheek.

“Daddy?”

“I love you,” Peter said, then looked to the man. “Take care of her.”

The man nodded, and Peter turned, running for the edge of the bridge. He snapped his shoulder back into place before jumping, screaming as much in pain as with anger as he jumped for the approaching Osborn. His momentum carried him past the glider as Osborn pulled up into the sky, but Peter caught the trailing edge with twin weblines and sling-shot himself onto the back of the glider. Osborn turned just in time to block Peter’s punch while the machine carried them across the river, toward residential areas in Queens. Back and forth they traded punches, each carrying more weight than the last.

“Enough of this, Parker,” Osborn said, and the glider began to violently dip from side to side. Peter had to use his arms to keep balance, which only opened him up to repeated shots from Osborn directly into the face. It was becoming clear, though: Norman’s punches, even assisted by the Goblin armor, were having little effect on him.

Peter caught Norman’s fist with one hand.

“Not this time, asshole,” Peter said and slid the mask back, so Osborn could like him directly in the eye. “This time you’re going down for good.”

Peter ripped Osborn off the glider, lifting him high above his head. Osborn screamed as he did, kicking and flailing before going still just as Peter threw him at the ground. Suddenly, the glider climbed steeply, the leading edge lifting in a near right angle. Peter was hung on for a moment before jumping from it. The machine dipped just as quickly, racing down and catching Osborn before the man could hit the pavement. The glider lifted, and Osborn waved to him before orienting back on the river, heading back for Manhattan. A burst of gunfire from the approaching SHIELD chopper brought him back in a loop, though, and Peter could see Firestar streaking across the sky, just beyond the chopper. He sprang from the side of the building, trying to reach the glider. Osborn released a furry of pumpkin bombs at him, though, and it was all he could do to dodge them before trying to race after the retreating glider. Peter ran across rooftops and used twin weblines to spring himself forward were he could, but Osborn continued to climb, taking him out of Peter’s reach, until the chopper came into view.

“Quake, tell that bird I am hitching a ride,” he said and attached his line to the chopper. Osborn looked back and saw him in pursuit, then pulled his helmet off. Peter watched, confused until he saw the man lift one of the injectors to his neck.

“Osborn, no!” Peter screamed. He pulled himself up to the chopper and pushed off it hard, his legs pushing him through the air and propelling him the distance to the glider again.

“What have you done?” he asked, delivering a combo of punches into Norman’s face. The man’s skin was already starting to ripple, the armor cracking open where the body began to stretch and enlarge.

“Finishing it!” Osborn yelled, then threw his head back and laughed, the maddest of all the laughs Peter had ever heard escape from Osborn’s mouth. The chopper began to pass over head. Peter knew he only had seconds before Osborn’s formula caused him to Hulk out.

“Tell the pilots to bail,” he said, looking up and grabbing Osborn by the chest-plate. Distracted by the horrible spasms ripping through his body as the serum did its job, Osborn ignored him. Peter waited till he saw the crew of the chopper jump and then jumped himself, pushing Osborn ahead of him.

“Firestar, hit the chopper with everything you’ve got now!” Peter said. As he got closer, he saw the flare of Angelica’s corona and the approach of the blast. He let go of Osborn and started to drop away, but Norman grabbed him before he could.

“Spider die!”

“You first!” Peter screamed in return as they crashed into the chopper. The symbiote screamed and the world exploded around him.

***

The ghosts drifted away. All that remained around him was the living. Quake had joined them, as well as several SHIELD agents. But it was Bobby and Angelica that made everything for him, two of his oldest friends. Two of the people he loved the most in the world.

“Did I get him?”

Something wet hit his forehead. Peter looked up into Angelica’s face. It must have been one of her tears.

“You got him, buddy,” Bobby said. “You got him good.”

“And May?”

“She’s on the way,” Bobby squeezed his hand. “Just hang on, Pete. She’ll be here any minute.”

Peter glanced around, seeing a familiar house nearby. He smiled and shook his head.

“How about that?” He pointed with his free hand at what had once been Aunt May’s boarding house, where Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends had conducted their summer of heroics. “This is about where we were standing in that picture.”

Firestar sobbed loudly, and he looked back to her. He wanted so desperately to go to sleep. He lifted his hand to her cheek again and noticed how old and frail it looked. An old man’s hand.

“Oh,” he said, and suddenly understood. “Oh, shit.”

Angelica kissed his forehead and tried to say something, but her words were choked out by the sobs.

“You two take care of her for me,” he said. “Tell her I love her. Tell he about power and responsibility. Tell her I wasn’t a total asshole.”

“I can’t lie to her,” Bobby said gently. Peter couldn’t help but chuckle, and Bobby’s face grew into a grin. Before long they were both laughing.

“Stop it,” Angelica said, but he could hear her trying not to laugh. “God damn it, will you two grow up?”

Peter shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“If you want,” Bobby said, “Jean-Paul and I can adopt her. Only if you want.”

“You two will be great dads.” Peter looked up to Angelica. “Is that okay with you?”

She nodded and then smiled softly. “I… I won’t be long behind you anyway.”

“Daddy?”

Peter looked to the voice, to his little May. Coulson had her by one hand, but he released it as she ran toward them. Peter opened his arms to her and a moment later she was with him, hugging him. He held her close, inhaled the scent of her hair, and lost himself in a moment that seemed to stretch for eternity. He closed his eyes and cried and felt truly complete once more.

“I love you, May.”

And then he died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for sticking with me. I am sorry it took so long to finish. I have at least three more fics planned out in this universe. I hope you stick with me through them.


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